JANUARY. 1 1 



dangers. How secure would any of us be if we had 

 to stand, when we changed our winter for our summer 

 clothes, each on his own cast-off suit by way of raft ? 



TROUT AND MOSQUITO. 



And the gnat suggests the trout ; for there is a 

 give-and-take connection between these two more 

 close than many suspect. When the young trout 

 first struggles from the egg he is a queer phantasmic 

 little creature that you might dip up in a bucket by 

 the thousand without noticing that there was much 

 in it. And at this stage the female mosquito-gnat 

 pounces upon the embryo fish as it touches the sur- 

 face of the water, and kills it by sucking its apology 

 for blood. Later the mature fish redresses the balance 

 by swallowing the gnats' larvae as well as the gnats 

 themselves by scores. And there may be a direct 

 cause-and-effect connection between the emergence 

 of the gnats in mild weeks of the new year and 

 the up-stream journeys of the trout, each female 

 jealously escorted by at least one male, towards the 

 spawning-beds. 



WHERE THE SMALL FISH LIE. 



In actual wintry weather, however, little life stirs 

 in the fish-deserted streams. For one thing, this 

 season is always chosen for " cleaning " the streams 

 which means cutting the banks uninterestingly 

 even and scraping the bottom clear of its gracious 

 greenery of water-weeds. The result is the creation 

 of a slab-sided water-channel, to which imagination 



