LETTER XI 



Fine Weather Weeds Floating Vegetation Scum Spiders 

 Gnat amongst Spider-webs Swallows Young Swallows 

 at roost Reindeer loose in Garden Circus Clown 

 Elephants. 



i8M September 1886. 



DEAR MARCO The summer this year has 

 been remarkably fine, not perhaps as dry as 

 '85, but as what rain we had mostly fell in 

 the night (at least in this neighbourhood), the 

 fine days were many and very delightful. 

 The river was very free of weeds, which I 

 suppose was owing partly to the severe pro- 

 tracted frosts of winter, and partly to the 

 spring floods, which were unusually strong. 

 During the last two or three days I have 

 noticed quantities of floating lumps of minute 

 vegetation, which when examined are found 

 to have soft mud and sand attached to the 

 roots, and are rendered buoyant by numbers 



