THE NATURALIST DEVELOPING. 73 



stood the tiling in an instant. Some one shouted comfort- 

 ingly in my ear, as I rose spluttering from the sudden plunge, 

 " Ha ! ha ! I think the fish has caught you instead ! Hold on 

 to him ! hold on !" 



The fish was secured, after a desperate struggle, with our 

 united force ; and as I was yet quite a little fellow, the joke 

 of my having been " caught by the fish," was too good a one 

 not to tell for a long time among such boys ! 



We had skating, too, in the winter, and many a wild scene 

 there was when we were flying, like squads of swallows, hither 

 and yon upon the ice. There were some winters when extra- 

 ordinary floods came in the early part of the season, and then 

 the whole forest on the lowest side of the plantation would 

 be flooded, and its trunks stand several feet deep in the clear 

 water. The change of a night or two would freeze this over 

 suddenly and then such a time ! 



The earliest dawn of Saturday found us afoot with prepa- 

 ration, for we had scarcely slept for eagerness through that 

 long dull night of Friday ! Such clanking of skates as we set 

 off in a run, with a cold bite for breakfast in our hands, and 

 some more stuffed into our pockets for dinner ! This was too 

 great a time to think much of eating. 



Away across the wide bare fields, scrambling over the 

 rough, hard frozen ploughed ground in our thick boots, which 

 made great clamor on the crisp clear morning air, we hurried 

 with smoking nostrils and thick gloved hands. Our bodies 

 just from the warm bed, are almost cut in two at first by the 

 cold scythe of that winter's breath in its wide keen sweep 

 across the open fields but soon we reach the shelter of the 

 heavy wood, and then our blood comes glowing warm again 

 back to the tingling surface, and with eager shouts we greet 

 the strange scene. 



Sunrise is streaming now down through the dark trunks in 

 many a line of rosy light that is reflected in sharp broken 

 blazes far and wide, from the aerial mirror underneath, 



