But, undisturbed, the water-lily keeps her fragrant court, with few attendants.  The tall pickerel-weed (Pontederia) is her gentleman-usher, gorgeous in blue and gold through July, somewhat rusty in August.  The water-shield (Hydropeltis) is chief maid-of-honor; she is a highborn lady, not without royal blood indeed, but with rather a bend sinister; not precisely beautiful, but very fastidious; encased over her whole person with a gelatinous covering, literally a starched duenna.  Sometimes she is suspected of conspiring to drive her mistress from the throne; for we have observed certain slow watercourses where the leaves of the water-lily have been almost wholly replaced by the similar, but smaller, leaves of the water-shield.  More rarely seen is the slender Utricularia, a dainty maiden, whose light feet scarce touch the water,—­with the still more delicate floating white Water-Ranunculus, and the shy Villarsia, whose submerged flowers merely peep one day above the surface and then close again forever.  Then there are many humbler attendants, Potamogetons or pond-weeds.  And here float little emissaries from the dominions of land; for the fallen florets of the Viburnum drift among the lily-pads, with mast-like stamens erect, sprinkling the water with a strange beauty, and cheating us with the promise of a new aquatic flower.

These are the still life of this sequestered nook; but it is in fact a crowded thoroughfare.  No tropic jungle more swarms with busy existence than these midsummer waters and their bushy banks.  The warm and humming air is filled with insect sounds, ranging from the murmur of invisible gnats and midges, to the impetuous whirring of the great Libellulae, large almost as swallows, and hawking high in air for their food.  Swift butterflies glance by, moths flutter, flies buzz, grasshoppers and katydids pipe their shrill notes, sharp as the edges of the sunbeams.  Busy bees go humming past, straight as arrows, express-freight-trains from one blossoming copse to another.  Showy wasps of many species fume uselessly about, in gallant uniforms, wasting an immense deal of unnecessary anger on the sultry universe.  Graceful, stingless Sphexes and Ichneumon-flies emulate their bustle, without their weapons.  Delicate lady-birds come and go to the milkweeds, spotted almost as regularly as if Nature had decided to number the species, like policemen or hack-drivers, from one to twenty.  Elegant little Lepturae fly with them, so gay and airy, they hardly seem like beetles.  Phryganeae, (nes caddisworms,) laceflies, and long-tailed Ephemerae flutter more heavily by.  On the large alder-flowers clings the superb Desmocerus palliatus, beautiful as a tropical insect, with his steel-blue armor and his golden cloak (pallium) above his shoulders, grandest knight on this Field of the Cloth of Gold.  The countless fireflies which spangled the evening mist now only crawl sleepily, daylight creatures, with the lustre buried in their milky bodies.