256 ON SURREY HILLS. 



Alas ! we had to yield to superior force, I will not 

 say intelligence. They were setting to work on 

 that happy hunting water. First they cleared 

 the weeds out, then they levelled the bottom ; in 

 this process, as a matter of course, they broke up 

 all the homes of the inhabitants. They put cart- 

 loads of rubble in, for the fish to spawn on. Then, 

 to crown all, they stocked the water with fish that 

 could not live there. The brook, having lost its 

 natural purifiers, lost all its brightness and purity, 

 and the fish could not get food. Water-snails, water- 

 shrimps, caddis, and water - beetles, and a host of 

 other minute creatures had perished with the weeds 

 that had been so foolishly raked out, and left to rot 

 on the banks of the brook. 



For fifty years I have explored in Nature's domains 

 as a field naturalist ; I have given close attention to 

 such subjects as the above, and the result of my ex- 

 perience in the matter is, that after the lapse of a 

 few years, whatever course may have been taken by 

 the owners of our soil and waters, all things come 

 round again as they were before Dame Nature, with 

 her inevitable law of the survival of the fittest, re- 

 asserting herself here as elsewhere. 



