A SHARP LOOKOUT 21 



a book from which he may draw exhaustless enter- 

 tainment, if he will. One must not only learn 

 the writing, he must translate the language, the 

 signs, and the hieroglyphics. It is a very quaint 

 and elliptical writing, and much must be supplied 

 by the wit of the translator. At any rate, the les- 

 son is to be well conned. Gilbert White said that 

 that locality would be found the richest in zoologi- 

 cal or botanical specimens which was most thor- 

 oughly examined. For more than forty years he 

 studied the ornithology of his district without ex- 

 hausting the subject. I thought I knew my own 

 tramping ground pretty well, but one April day, 

 when I looked a little closer than usual into a small 

 semi-stagnant lakelet where I had peered a hundred 

 times before, I suddenly discovered scores of little 

 creatures that were as new to me as so many nymphs 

 would have been. They were partly fish-shaped, 

 from an inch to an inch and a half long, semi-trans- 

 parent, with a dark brownish line visible the entire 

 length of them (apparently the thread upon which 

 the life of the animal hung, and by which its all 

 but impalpable frame was held together), and sus- 

 pending themselves in the water, or impelling them- 

 selves swiftly forward by means of a double row of 

 fine, waving, hair-like appendages, that arose from 

 what appeared to be the back, — a kind of undula- 

 ting, pappus-like wings. What was it ? I did not 

 know. None of my friends or scientific acquaint- 

 ances knew. I wrote to a learned man, an author- 

 ity upon fish, describing the creature as well as I 



