y when he turns far on his side and gives you a glimpse of
red fin and white belly that he is plainly visible, and only
desperate need will make him thus turn.

After perch and bream have left, satisfied, a little group of
thumbling hornpouts come and grub and dabble in the muddy hole
whence the unio came, feeding upon I know not what; probably tiny
infusoriae of the fresh water. These little black cats are the
busiest folk of the brook at this time of the year, and just
whence they come or whither they go I cannot say. If you fish the
waters with angle worms you will not pull out one of these little
fellows till the summer is fairly on. Then, dog days having
arrived, you will get a chance to catch nothing else, so long as
one of them remains in the pool you choose. They are great angle-worm
chasers and will get across a pool and grab a bait before any
other denizen of the place can possibly get to it. Their agility
is the more surprising when one remembers that the grown hornpout
is but a sluggish chap and that they are not built on lines that
presage swiftness. You may catch the big horn pouts at any season,
but these little chaps are peculiar to the dog days. I have an
idea they hibernate in the mud at bottom until warm weather calls
them forth, and that by next spring, so voracious is their
appetite and such their agility in satisfying it, they are as big
as the others of their kind. So eager are these gourmands for bait
that if but one is in a pool you may catch him, throw him back and
catch him again times without number, provided the hook does not
happen to injure his tough jaw.

Such a glimpse of the submarine life of the brook the muskrat has
given me with the musky odor of his passing. After a little all is
quiet down there and I have a chance to admire the life which
flits above the surface. The hawking dragonflies weave gossamer
fabrics of dreams in their unending flight to and fro and the lull
of the forest symphony bids one yield to these as the waning
afternoon builds up its shadows from all hollows and glens. In the
open pastures the heat still quivers, but here the woodland
deities are building night, block on block, for the cooling and
soothing of the world. The heliographing ceases. The foam writing
blurs in the shadows. Down long aisles of perfumed green the voice
of the wood thrush rings mellow and serene. Here is a woodland
chorister who sings of peace and calls to holy thoughts, voicing
the ev