LIFE IN PONDS AND MARSHES 



BY R. W. SHUFELDT 



WE usually define a pond as a body of water of less 

 extent than a lake, and examples may be seen 

 in a duckpond or a millpond ; this definition holds 

 true whether the pond is a natural one or made through 

 artificial means. Again, ponds may be fed by springs or 

 streams, or they may dry up either wholly or partially 

 during prolonged droughts. 



A pond need never be confused with a marsh the 

 latter being sometimes defined as a fen or a swamp. 

 Here we have a tract of land that may be temporarily, 

 partially, or permanently, overflowed by water either 

 rain water, or water coming from the overflow of neigh- 

 boring springs, or from rivers, creeks, or small streams. 

 Such overflows usually occur over stretches of low 

 ground of greater or less extent, causing it to become 

 miry, wet, and swampy. Land thus covered will soon 

 entirely change in character; aquatic plants will spring 

 up in it where the water is not too deep, and water-loving 



shrubs and trees will eventually skirt its margins. This will 

 happen irrespective of the fact that such a marsh may dry 

 up partially or entirely during dry seasons or droughts. 



Swamps may be connected with one or more ponds, or 

 with a system of ponds. When a marsh is formed by 

 low-land in touch with the rise and fall of the tides in 

 bodies of salt-water, such marshes are known as tide- 

 marshes or salt-marshes, and in these the majority of 

 plant growths will be entirely different from what we 

 meet with in a fresh-water marsh or pond. So, too, for 

 the trees and shrubs that flourish along the margins of a 

 salt-water marsh they will be found to be entirely dif- 

 ferent species as compared with those growing along the 

 borders of ponds. 



Sometimes, when marshes dry up and remain so for 

 a long period, the deeper parts of one or more of them 

 may remain as a pond or system of ponds ; but this cannot 

 well happen indeed, under most circumstances can never 



MARSH SCENE NEAR THE GREAT LAKES 



This most attractive view is but one of a series of many others forming a part of an exhibit at the Museum of the Chicago Academy of 

 Sciences. Mr. Frank M. Woodruff, curator of that institution, is the designer, and it represents a scene on the Calumet River, near Chicago, 

 long before that city became the great metropolis it now is. Upwards of twenty living forms are presented in it. 



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