rain, without affecting them, if only the storms 

 are from the right quarter and it stays warm. 

 A cold east wind always hurries them back to 

 deep water, where they remain until the weather 

 warms up again. Late in -May, however, when 

 they must lay their eggs, they ascend the stream, 

 and nothing short of a four-foot dam will effec- 

 tually stop their progress to the pond. 



They are great swimmers. It is a live fish in- 

 deed that makes Whitman's Pond. There are 

 flying-fish and climbing-fish, fish that walk over 

 land and fish that burrow through the mud; 

 but in an obstacle race, with a swift stream to 

 stem, with rocks, logs, shallows, and dams to get 

 over, you may look for a winner in the herring. 



He will get up somehow— right side up or 

 bottom side up, on his head or on his tail, swim- 

 ming, jumping, flopping, climbing, up he comes ! 

 A herring can almost walk on his tail. I have 

 watched them swim up Herring Run with their 

 backs half out of water ; and when it became too 

 shallow to swim at all, they would keel over on 

 their sides and flop for yards across stones so 

 bare and dry that a mud-minnow might easily 

 have drowned upon them for lack of water. 

 [348] 



