SPORT AND SCIENCE. 187 



increased, cut away the earth, exposing the roots of 

 grasses, and sometimes the stores of acorns laid up by 

 mice. Frozen again in the night, the glacier stayed, 

 and crumbling earth, leaves, fibres, acorns, and small 

 dead boughs fell on it. Slipping on as the wind grew 

 warmer, it carried these with it and deposited them 

 fifty yards from where they originated. This is exactly 

 the action of a glacier. The ice-mist was often visible 

 over the frozen water-meadows, where I went for 

 duck, teal, and at intervals a woodcock in the adjacent 

 mounds. But it was better seen in the early evening 

 over a great pond, a mile or more long ; where, too, the 

 immense lifting power of water, was exemplified, as 

 the merest trickle of a streamlet flowing in by-and-by 

 forced up the thick ice in broad sheets weighing 

 hundreds of tons. Then, too, breathing-holes formed 

 just as they are described in the immense lakes of 

 North America, Lakes Superior or Michigan, and in the 

 ice of the Polar circle. These were never frozen over 

 and attracted wild-fowl 



In August, when there were a few young ducks 

 about, the pond used to remind me in places of the 

 tropical lakes we heard so much of after the 

 explorers got through the portentous continent, on 

 account of the growth of aquatic weeds, the quantity 

 and extent of which no one would credit who had not 

 seen them. No wonder the explorers could not get 

 through the papyrus-grown rivers and lakes, for a boat 

 could hardly be forced through these. Acres upon 

 acres of weeds covered the place, some coming up from 

 a depth of twelve feet. Some fish are chiefly on the 

 feed in the morning, and any one who has the courage 



