warmest weather I usually placed a pailful in my cellar, where it
became cool in the night, and remained so during the day; though I also
resorted to a spring in the neighborhood. It was as good when a week old
as the day it was dipped, and had no taste of the pump. Whoever camps
for a week in summer by the shore of a pond, needs only bury a pail of
water a few feet deep in the shade of his camp to be independent of the
luxury of ice.

There have been caught in Walden pickerel, one weighing seven pounds--to
say nothing of another which carried off a reel with great velocity,
which the fisherman safely set down at eight pounds because he did
not see him--perch and pouts, some of each weighing over two pounds,
shiners, chivins or roach (Leuciscus pulchellus), a very few breams, and
a couple of eels, one weighing four pounds--I am thus particular because
the weight of a fish is commonly its only title to fame, and these are
the only eels I have heard of here;--also, I have a faint recollection
of a little fish some five inches long, with silvery sides and a
greenish back, somewhat dace-like in its character, which I mention here
chiefly to link my facts to fable. Nevertheless, this pond is not very
fertile in fish. Its pickerel, though not abundant, are its chief boast.
I have seen at one time lying on the ice pickerel of at least three
different kinds: a long and shallow one, steel-colored, most like those
caught in the river; a bright golden kind, with greenish reflections
and remarkably deep, which is the most common here; and another,
golden-colored, and shaped like the last, but peppered on the sides with
small dark brown or black spots, intermixed with a few faint blood-red
ones, very much like a trout. The specific name reticulatus would not
apply to this; it should be guttatus rather. These are all very firm
fish, and weigh more than their size promises. The shiners, pouts, and
perch also, and indeed all the fishes which inhabit this pond, are much
cleaner, handsomer, and firmer-fleshed than those in the river and most
other ponds, as the water is purer, and they can easily be distinguished
from them. Probably many ichthyologists would make new varieties of some
of them. There are also a clean race of frogs and tortoises, and a
few mussels in it; muskrats and minks leave their traces about it, and
occasionally a travelling mud-turtle visits it. Sometimes, when I pushed
off my boat in the morning, I disturbed a gre