A SHARP LOOKOUT 



specimens which was most thoroughly ex- 

 amined. For more than forty years he 

 studied the ornithology of his district with- 

 out exhausting the subject. I thought I 

 knew my own tramping ground pretty well, 

 but one April day, when I looked a little 

 closer than usual into a small semi-stagnant 

 lakelet where I had peered a hundred times 

 before, I suddenly discovered scores of lit- 

 tle creatures that were as new to me as so 

 many nymphs would have been. They 

 were partly fish-shaped, from an inch to an 

 inch and a half long, semi-transparent, with 

 a dark brownish line visible the entire 

 length of them (apparently the thread upon 

 which the life of the animal hung, and by 

 which its all but impalpable frame was held 

 together), and suspending themselves in 

 the water, or impelling themselves swiftly 

 forward by means of a double row of fine, 

 waving, hair-like appendages, that arose 

 from what appeared to be the back, 

 a kind of undulating, pappus -like wings. 

 What was it ? I did not know. None of 

 my friends or scientific acquaintances knew. 

 I wrote to a learned man, an authority upon 

 fish, describing the creature as well as I 

 could. He replied that it was only a fa- 

 205 



