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Down into it we plunged, and there Slim divulged another characteristic. He did not have a siesta. He got down on his heels on the bank where the river made a backward eddy and began examining the little sticks and twigs joggling together in that backwash, while Hank and I rolled cigarettes, and sat down to enjoy the coolness of the water under the shade of the trees.

"Here you are!" said Slim. "Ever seen one of these before?" and he picked from the water a specimen of some species of caddis worm. "Look. See here. Don't he look just like a bit of a twig? And here he is living among a whole raft of little twigs." He jerked a thumb toward the immensity of blue that glittered in chinks of the green over us and—"Queer Fellow!" he remarked.

Retrieving another of the little things from that backwash, with both side by side in his palm, he compared their characteristics, noting similarities and discrepancies, an untutored Fabre and without a microscope.

"They ain't a match, you see," he said. "They're as different as two twigs would be. This fellow has a little sort of a knob, like you see on a twig, but it ain't placed the same as on the other lad. Whatever eats 'em or preys upon 'em wouldn't be sure, seeing one, that it wasn't a twig. They tell me if you break a little bit off one, he grows it again."