64 NATURE-STUDY REVIEW [13:2— Feb., 1917 



some pools and quiet places for beetles and larvae to play in. 

 And then they met ! After all this time ! But instead of hurrying 

 on, as you might expect, they got acquainted with each other 

 and spread out in a big broad marsh, where cat-tails liked to 

 grow and red-winged blackbirds had their nests. Together they 

 filled a broad, deep place, which took up more room, than they 

 had ever filled before. After a little while, they decided to move 

 on a little ; the two of them pulled together and were now one brook ; 

 this ran on for a little while until it wanted to play some more, 

 and made another marsh. The next time it decided to move on, 

 it had to go, like a very well-behaved, civilized brook, because 

 somebody made a very proper and straight sort of a course for it 

 through a meadow; under another road it went, and came out 

 again and made pools where it wanted to among all kinds of stones, 

 and where beetles, water spiders, cray fishes, and other brook 

 animals could play on it and in it. 



Many kinds of trees gathered around the brook, leaning over 

 it to hear what it was saying, for it moved along faster and was 

 having a better time than ever before, so that even the bushes 

 came close to it, and as the brook hurried along they got so 

 interested, that they almost hid the water and you couldn't see 

 it at all, except by scrambling through raspberries briers and 

 wild cherry trees. Once it made an island, which was not as big 

 as Robinson Crusoe's, but was a wonderful island just the same. 

 Lovely flowers, violets and trilliums came and grew upon it, and 

 the brook was very happy. It grew very lazy in its happiness 

 and lapped around the island, making its edges marshy. But 

 even an island couldn't stop the brook now, and soon it hurried 

 on faster than ever, so fast that it washed all the stones from the 

 smooth rock and then it slipped along the stone steps at a great 

 rate. 



But not all the time, did the brook hurry so. Sometimes it 

 slowed up, around some trees which fell into it; here it left stones 

 and sticks which it had carried along, and these would form a 

 little dam and a pool for birds to drink in, and for minnows to 

 swim in. The banks around the brook were, Oh ! very high now, 

 and there was room for so many trees that it was almost like a 

 woods. The brook enjoyed this very much, and felt very glad 

 that its springs had started out to find other brooks, for it felt 

 that these ferns and trees and flowers were its very own, and liked 



