FOR THE CHILDREN.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LIX, Issue 18275, 16 December 1922, Page 10 (Supplement)

FOR THE CHILDREN.

SALLY SANDFLY. ET EDITH HOWES.

No. 22.

(All Rights Reserved.)

Sally Sandfly lived in a cr««k where the clear water ran over big {.tones and ferns and mosses hung dripping along its edges, their lovely green pearled with gleaming spray. At first she had been an egg, email as a pinpoint, laid by Mother Sandfly on the stem of a water plant. Now that she was hatched she was the queerest little creature, shaped like a very tiny bottle, but a bottle with 3egs~-two near each end.

She crept down to the bottom of the creek where she could hide under a stone from the enemies in the water world. She liad the quaintest way of walking. Sho first put out her front legs, then drew up her funny little body into a loop so as to biing the two back legs close to the front ones, then put out the two front ones again. So she went looping and looping along, hunting for creatures too small for human eye to see, but not too small for her to eat. She caught them with her hair. On top of her head a bunch of hairs stood out She could wave these about in the water like a net till she caught something, then she could bend them round and put the little creatures in her mouth. You couldn't do that with your hair. After a few days she said: 1 must really have a homo of ray own.' tor the water rushed fast and sho was very tiny and was often swept about helplessly. \nd she could not always stay in one sale corner; she must go out to find food So sho sat still under the leaf of a water weed and began to spin as if wo had been a little caterpillar, drawing thin strands of silk from her body and weaving them into a fine, wide web like a spider s web across the outside of the leat. Vow sho could hang herself into the web by her tinv claws, head down to catch her food, and there sho could cling bvth,.hour, firmly held and safem the rushing water. And when she wished to £2"L kept fast hold of a ong rfkj. life-line whose end was fixed to the weD. It was a splendid homo! There she lived, fishing with .her hair.. or dropping to the creek-floc-r and looping her way over the stones, her touch aIWMS on her life-line. And she ate and ate, till fn a few weeks she was full grown. •It is time to make my Hidie-Bag, *he said, for she felt the Groat Change coming. Sho sat on the stem of her leat and spun a bag of silk and tied it to the stem with silken threads The bag was not finished : there was a hole at the top. Through this hole she crept in, then spun more wab overhead till the bag was quite closed in and finished. Now sho was safe. The bag was tough and strong and it had no opening through which an enemy might enter. It hung there under the stem in the water like a very tinv Indian cradle, long and narrow and securely tied at the top. Inside Sally lav helpless. She who had been bo active, daily helping her growth bv her eager feeding, must now lie stUl, unable to eat, letting growth do its own work, suffering whatever should come to her. She had done her part; now she must wait ' The long davs and nights went by. Slowly, slowly the Great Change went on Bottle-body, " legs and hair > . ali wer-d being transformed. Wings were being made, and a tinv fly-like body and six fine legs jointed and dawed/and a marvellous set of mouth tools for sawing and piercing and sucking, •with a bag of poison at their base. Strange gases and chemicals were being used, "and air was set free to collect in a bubble round the little body. At last all was done, and Sally woke up from her long trance, woke quick and eager, ready for the new life, restless, longine to dart and fly. But" how should she fly, imprisoned her*»? Around her was the bag she herself had woven, tough and strong and closed. Outside that was the flowing water. Above. >:n the surface of the creek, was the water fiim which waa so hard to break through that many a fly much bigger and stronger than herself had drowned beneath it. How should so tiny » creature escape and soar? She wriggled and pushed and wriggled and pushed at the bag, and sawed at it till slic sawed it open. Flick ! Up like a shot went the bubble of air, through the water, up through the surface film clear out to the top. And, wrapped in the bubble of air, lifted in it as in a balloon, up to the top went Sally herself. That was a splendid ride! The bubble burst and W3S spread into the surrounding air above the creek, and Sally was left standing on the water film. She was so light, and the film was so thick, that she could stand on it like you could on thick ice. However, she didn't want to stay there; she wanted to fly. But first Bhe must dry her wings, which as yet were soft and flabby. She walked on the water till she came to the stem of a water weed. Up this she climbed. Standing high in the wind she unwrapped her wings and set them quicky whirrinjr, and they dried to a firm, fine laciness. Now she could fly. Now she could dart and soar. Off she went, swift, black, minute, to live the rest of her life in the air. No longer was she a fteher. With her month tools she sawed or pierced holes in, leaves, and with her long sucking tube she drew up their nourishing juices. So for a time she lived on plants, but I am afraid that in the end she found out that children who came to wade in the creek or play upon its banks had sweet, red juice in their bare legs and arms. With her sharp tools and sucking tube she can reach that juice. Has she found you .out?

DUTCH SHOES. The Dutch make so many rises oj ■wooden shoes that one is persuaded to believe the "Old •woman who lived in a ehoe, and had so many children she didn't know what to doj" "was a Dutch rrouw. The children turn shoes into boats, and paint them a rich deep brown, in imitations of the large boats which sail on the rivers. As they trim the tiny sails of their ships, and launch them upon the waters of a sloot, to some imaginary Van Dieman's Land not to he found in a geography, they seem to be possessed with the same spirit which inspired the Dutch navigators of earlier days. Wooden shoes are ornamented for flower-pots, and many a bright flower, whose roots are firmly bedded in a shoe, has graced the window of some peasant's cottage. They are used as hammers, and it, is not uncommon to see a koopman (merchant) by the wayside, witli a few taps of hip shoe mending his cart, piled high with yellow carrots, or little round Dutch cheeses, while his dogs rest in the traces. During the week, after school hours the little? girls walk along the dyke? in rows, knitting; and the clatter of their shoes, to an ear unfamiliar with it, is like the sound of an advancing regiment. Saturday is the great cleaning day in Holland, when everything is made ready for Sunday, the day of rest. The houses are scrubbed inside and out, and among the pots' and kettles are seen the wooden shoes; these, scoured snowy white, hang upon forked sticks, near the doorway, to dry in the wind and sun, A "GEORGE" STORY. A Manchester schoolboy was recently asked to writ* a short account of the " Georges " in English hißtory, as described by Thackeray in his lectures on the " four Georges. This is how the clever boy did it:— " George the First was always reckoned Viie —but viler George the Second; And what mortal ever heard Any good of George the Third? When from earth the Fourth descended, God be praised the Georges ended!"

But as ft postcript to his short poem he tidded the following:— " Oeocge the Fifth turned out the beat, And he made up for all th» rest!"