SPORT AND SCIENCE. 18^ 



danger. Down to the chest it was warm, quite warm, 

 while the feet were very cold. Not much imagination 

 is needed to conceive the effect on persons not used to 

 rough bathing, and even a strong man might suffer. 

 People insisted that these chills and cramps were caused 

 by cold springs rising at the bottom, and could not be 

 argued out of that belief. As a matter of fact there 

 was not a single spring over the whole extent of the 

 bottom. That part in particular was often dry, not 

 from dry weather, but as the water of the pond was 

 drawn away. Let it rain as much as it would, no 

 spring ever broke up there. The cold currents were 

 produced by the shadow of the copse, and, had the 

 trees been felled, would have disappeared. That would 

 have been like letting the sun of the Equator shine on 

 the Polar seas. 



After a storm of wind the lee shore was marked 

 with a dark-green line of weeds and horse-tails, 

 torn up and drifted across, which had been thrown 

 up by the little breakers beyond the usual level of 

 the water. A mass of other weeds and horse-tails, 

 boughs and leaves, remained floating; and now was 

 seen a reversal of the habits of fishes. Every one 

 knows that fishes seek the windward shore in a breeze 

 for the insects blown in ; but now, while the gale, 

 though subsiding, still rippled the water, the best place 

 to fish was on the lee shore, just at the edge of the 

 drifted weeds. Various insects probably were there 

 washed away from the green raft to which they had 

 clung. The water being often lowered by drawing 

 hatches, the level changed frequently ; and as storms 

 of wind happened at different levels, so there were 



