50 NATURE NEAR LONDON 



slight movement instantly scuttled back under the arch. 

 The water-rat, less timorous, paused, looked round, and 

 returned to feeding. 



Crossing to the other side of the bridge, up stream, 

 and looking over, the current had scooped away the sand 

 of the bottom by the central pier, exposing the brickwork 

 to some depth the same undermining process that goes 

 on by the piers of bridges over great rivers. Nearer the 

 shore the sand has silted up, leaving it shallow, where 

 water-parsnip and other weeds joined, as it were, the 

 verge of the grass and the stream. The sunshine re- 

 flected from the ripples on this, the southern side, 

 continually ran with a swift, trembling motion up the 

 arch. 



Penetrating the clear water, the light revealed the tiniest 

 stone at the bottom : but there was no fish, no water-rat, 

 or moorhen on this side. Neither on that nor many 

 succeeding mornings could anything be seen there ; the 

 tail of the arch was evidently the favourite spot. Care- 

 fully looking over that side again, the moorhen who had 

 been out rushed back ; the water-rat was gone. Were 

 there any fish ? In the shadow the water was difficult to 

 see through, and the brown scum of spring that lined the 

 bottom rendered everything uncertain. 



By gazing steadily at a stone my eyes presently became 

 accustomed to the peculiar light, the pupils adjusted 

 themselves to it, and the brown tints became more dis- 

 tinctly defined. Then sweeping by degrees from a stone 

 to another, and from thence to a rotting stick em- 

 bedded in the sand, I searched the bottom inch by inch. 

 If you look, as it were at large at everything at 

 once you see nothing. If you take some object as 

 a fixed point, gaze all around it, and then move to 

 another, nothing can escape. 



