AND OF STILL WATERS. 101 



of May ; on the 12th they were diminished to one- tenth 

 of the number, and on the 14th there was not one left. 

 As I had by no means satisfied myself on the subject, I 

 felt disappointed that they had so soon finished their opera- 

 tions, and I took up a handful of the gravel where they 

 had been spawning, and examined it with the microscope 

 to see whether I could discover any eggs and how they 

 were going on, when, to my great surprise, I found them 

 hatching, and some of them already excluded from the 

 egg. One of them which I took on the point of a knife 

 swam briskly away, and another was the means of 

 pointing out an enemy to me that I had never before 

 suspected, and that I had always believed to be the prey 

 and not the devourer of fish. The poor minnow had 

 somehow got fast to the point of the knife, and in its 

 struggles to free itself it attracted the attention of a creeper 

 (the larva, I believe of the fly called the green drake by 

 anglers), which pounced upon it as fiercely as the water 

 staphylinus does upon the luckless tadpole ; but, fortu- 

 nately for the minnow, either the glittering of the knife- 

 blade or the motion of my hand scared it away again with- 

 out its prey. The young minnows in this state were quite 

 transparent, except the eyes, which appeared dispropor- 

 tionately large ; and they seemed to be perfectly aware 

 that they owed their safety to concealment, as those that 

 I saw immediately buried themselves in the gravel when 

 they were set at liberty." 



During the spawning season the heads of the 

 minnows are covered with small white osseous 

 knobs, which appear immediately before, and 



