IN THE LITTLE BROOK. 357 



face of the moutli, wliicli has no lips nor jaws, but is surrounded 

 bj a belt of fringes. "When the lamprey is hungry he puts his 

 mouth against the side of some fish, exhausts the water between, 

 and then the pressure of the outside water holds him there tightly. 

 "When this is done, the fish swims away and the lamprey rides with 

 it, giving no thought to where he is going, but all the while scrap- 

 ing away the flesh with his rasplike teeth. When he has filed off 

 enough fish flesh to satisfy his hunger he lets go, and goes off about 

 his business. The fish, who does not know what hurt him, goes off 

 to get well if he can. Usually he can not, for the water of the brook 

 is full of the germs of little toadstool-like plants, and these fasten 

 themselves on the fish's wounds and make them bigger and bigger, 

 until at last the cavity of the abdomen is pierced and little creatures 

 of many kinds, plant and animal, go in there and plunder all this 

 fish's internal organs, to carry them away for their own purposes. 



But when the lampreys come up the April brook it is not to feed 

 on fishes, nor is it to feed at all. Nature is insistent that the race 

 should be kept up, and every animal is compelled to attend to the 

 needs of the species, even though it be at the sacrifice of all else. 

 If she were not so, the earth and the seas would be depopulated, and 

 this is a contingency toward which Nature has never looked. 



The lampreys come up the stream to spawn, and while on this 

 errand they fasten their round mouths to stones or clods of earth, 

 that the current may not sweep them away. When so fastened 

 they look like some strange dark plant clinging to the bottom of 

 the brook. When the spawning season is over some of them still 

 remain there, forgotten by Nature, who is now busied with other 

 things, and they wear their lives away still clinging — a strange, 

 weird piece of brook-bottom scenery which touched the fancy of 

 Thoreau. 



When the young are hatched they are transparent as jelly, 

 blind and toothless, with a mouth that seems only a slit down the 

 front end of the body. These little creatures slip down the brook 

 unobserved, and hide themselves in the grass and lily pads till their 

 teeth are grown and they go about rasping the bodies of their bet- 

 ters, grieving the fishes who do not know how to protect themselves. 



The lamprey is not a fish at all, only a wicked imitation of one 

 which can deceive nobody. But there are fishes which are unques- 

 tionably fish — fish from gills to tail, from head to fin, and of these 

 the little sunfish may stand first. He comes up the brook in the 

 spring, fresh as " coin just from the mint," finny arms and legs 

 wide spread, his gills moving, his mouth opening and shutting 

 rhythmically, his tail wide spread, and ready for any sudden motion 

 for which his erratic little brain may give the order. The scales 



