12 MY NATURE NOTEBOOK. 



almost refuses to restore the comely aspect which it 

 will bear in spring and summer, its banks starred 

 with clusters of marsh marigolds, or later fringed with 

 creamy meadowsweet and tufted with crimson spikes 

 of loosestrife, or tinged with the tall pink haze of 

 willow herbs. But in the meandering ditches and 

 transverse dykes that join the stream you will find 

 life enough even in midwinter, though it is often life 

 and death in queer conjunction. Here, for instance, 

 where the stream, swollen with melted snow, sets up 

 a tiny whirlpool at the junction of the dyke, is col- 

 lected a large company of very small fish. Each is 

 as motionless in the revolving water as a little bit 

 of stick. Yet it must require a delicate adjustment 

 of motive-power to remain thus immovably balanced 

 in a current which is all the while forcing the head 

 one way and the tail the other. 



MAKING WAY FOR THE CORPSE. 



As a rule, there is nothing to show that these little 

 fish which hang in motionless groups upon the fringe 

 of a racing current are doing anything particular; 

 but the other day I happened upon them in queer 

 company. A wretched frog had somehow been 

 drowned out of its winter quarters, and its corpse, 

 with all the limbs extended as in life, was solemnly 

 pirouetting round and round in the eddy where the 

 little fish hung motionless. If you picture the carcase 

 of an elephant twirled around by some invisible force 

 among a crowd of men, you get some idea of the 

 relative proportions of the frog and the fish ; yet none 

 of the latter seemed disturbed in the least as the 



