66 FISH CULTUEE. 



closer, you find that one of your fish has thrown oft" 

 its shell, and emerged to life. 



" Take it up tenderly, 

 Treat it with care, 

 Fashioned so — " 



No, not "slenderly," for a more unwieldy, delicate, 

 clumsy, welcome little stranger does not exist to 

 gladden the eyes of the delighted pisciculturist 

 withal. Now you have it in the little glass reser- 

 voir, with a drop or two of w r ater around and over 

 it, under the microscope. How it wriggles and 

 kicks ! what vigorous vitality is here, in this little 

 curious object ! Now it is quiescent, and what a 

 wondrous spectacle is revealed to you ! Is this a fish 

 or a new kind of tadpole? Verily, Sir Philosopher, 

 it is of fish, fishy — though not, perchance, fishlike. 

 Could this strange, helpless little thing ever become 

 the magnificent twenty-pounder, that takes you down 

 with breathless haste, with bending rod and whizzing 

 reel, stumbling and panting, full five hundred yards 

 ■ of that terrific torrent, and flinging somersaults that 

 rival those of the deftest acrobat, gives you a full half- 

 hour's hard work and awful excitement in the Devil's- 

 hole below? Can this little marvel, I say, be the 

 foundation of that which has had hundreds of laws 

 made for it, thousands of pages of reports collected 



