238 ANIMAL SKETCHES. CHAP. 



attention to their graceful movements, he replied, with 

 scarcely concealed indifference, " Oh, yes ! they do seem 

 to wriggle a lot." So closely allied is thought and its 

 expression, that the unpoetic nature spoke words which 

 jarred on the ear with a flippant tone of vulgarity. 



Meanwhile the elver I have been describing has found 

 the lid of a cocoa-tin too limited a sphere for his 

 ambition. That brain of his, which one can see outlined 

 through the skull, bespeaks a nervous, restless energy, not 

 to be restricted within such narrow limits. Again and 

 again he wriggles his lithe body (even the most poetic 

 soul must descend sometimes to the language of mere prose) 

 over the edge of the tin. But he always keeps half an 

 inch of his tail still immersed, and finding the smooth 

 surface of my dissecting table too unpromising a substance 

 for even an ambitious elver, returns to the limited, but still 

 fluid, medium within the tin, and endeavours to bore his 

 way through its unyielding substance by ramming his 

 nose into the tail of the Y in Mr. Fry's name embossed on 

 the lid. 



I must put him to a little more discomfort before I 

 return him to the tank, where he will dive amid the 

 greenery and hide awhile before he joins his comrades in 

 their evolutions in the patch of sunlight. 



Emptying away nearly all the water, leaving only enough 

 to keep the bottom of the tin moist, I have an opportunity 

 of watching his mode of progression over a solid surface. 

 He throws his body into a sharp S-like curve, and then, 

 keeping the hinder end of the S motionless, straightens 

 out the head end, bringing up the tail after it with a little 

 jerk. Placed now on a piece of wet blotting-paper, one 

 sees that the head and tail ends are successively lifted 

 from the surface, and progression is effected by a series of 

 looping movements. We will not keep him long, however, 



