inches, that is for those who have not eaten the Food--and it has two
sharp jaws that meet in front of its head--tubular jaws with sharp
points--through which its habit is to suck its victim's blood ...

The first things to get at the drifting grains of the Food were the
little tadpoles and the little water snails; the little wriggling
tadpoles in particular, once they had the taste of it, took to it with
zest. But scarcely did one of them begin to grow into a conspicuous
position in that little tadpole world and try a smaller brother or so as
an aid to a vegetarian dietary, when nip! one of the Beetle larva had
its curved bloodsucking prongs gripping into his heart, and with that
red stream went Herakleophorbia IV, in a state of solution, into the
being of a new client. The only thing that had a chance with these
monsters to get any share of the Food were the rushes and slimy green
scum in the water and the seedling weeds in the mud at the bottom. A
clean up of the study presently washed a fresh spate of the Food into
the puddle, and overflowed it, and carried all this sinister expansion
of the struggle for life into the adjacent pool under the roots of the
alder...

The first person to discover what was going on was a Mr. Lukey
Carrington, a special science teacher under the London Education Board,
and, in his leisure, a specialist in fresh-water algae, and he is
certainly not to be envied his discovery. He had come down to Keston
Common for the day to fill a number of specimen tubes for subsequent
examination, and he came, with a dozen or so of corked tubes clanking
faintly in his pocket, over the sandy crest and down towards the pool,
spiked walking stick in hand. A garden lad standing on the top of the
kitchen steps clipping Doctor Winkles' hedge saw him in this
unfrequented corner, and found him and his occupation sufficiently