XII. 



STILL WATER. 



STILL water is a very different thing from stagnant 

 water. We know this by the fact of the very different 

 kind of growths that are encouraged, and the different 

 kinds of life that they favour. After floods there is 

 always a certain amount of water left behind in depres- 

 sions in the lower parts of valley bottoms, but generally 

 it does not remain long; it is absorbed, and passes 

 away under the action of many agencies. All the 

 devices of scientific draining are averse to the stay of 

 this water. Generally it is still water, and any claim 

 such a sheet may have to picturesqueness is due to the 

 character of the surroundings. If the hills have wealth 

 of vegetation, or are bare and rocky, but with coatings 

 here and there of lichen or moss, how beautifully all 

 this is mirrored in the still sheet below ! If you sail 

 over it in a boat, you can see the green grass at the 

 bottom giving a kind of tint to the water ; and if there 

 are any structures on it due to the hand of man, were 

 it only a bit of paling or a fence-gate, you see the 

 upper part of it still left unhidden, mirrored in the 

 glassy mass. Such a bit does our first little engraving 

 portray. 



In some of our great inland lakes, where the spurs of 

 the hills, set forward like an advancing foot, seem to 

 break the regularity of line, we see the fine effects 



