PEPACTON 



and let her have her own way, she will find the 

 deepest water. Don't you, Denny ? " 



"I think she will," replied Denny; and I found 

 the boys were pretty nearly right. 



I tried them on a point of natural history. I had 

 observed, coming along, a great many dead eels 

 lying on the bottom of the river, that I supposed 

 had died from spear wounds. " No," said Johnny, 

 " they are lamper eels. They die as soon as they 

 have built their nests and laid their eggs." 



" Are you sure ? " 



"That's what they all say, and I know they are 

 lampers." 



So I fished one up out of the deep water with 

 my.paddle-blade and examined it; and sure enough 

 it was a lamprey. There was the row of holes along 

 its head, and its ugly suction mouth. I had noticed 

 their nests, too, all along, where the water in the 

 pools shallowed to a few feet and began to hurry 

 toward the rifts : they were low mounds of small 

 stones, as if a bushel or more of large pebbles had 

 been dumped upon the river bottom; occasionally 

 they were so near the surface as to make a big 

 ripple. The eel attaches itself to the stones by its 

 mouth, and thus moves them at will. An old fisher- 

 man told me that a strong man could not pull a 

 large lamprey loose from a rock to which it had 

 attached itself. It fastens to its prey in this way, 

 and sucks the life out. A friend of mine says he 

 14 



