64 TROUT FISHING 



was possible to think that the drops had 

 been frozen in the air ; but a subversive 

 doubt beset me. Could it be that the 

 beads, formed and fixed, had been snatched 

 bodily from the stream itself ? 



This thought was incompatible with 

 the accepted understanding about water. 

 Many a midnight, walking homeward 

 from an hour or two of after-dinner 

 billiards at the Club, my friend Rudolph 

 Messel, whose scientific knowledge is 

 honoured in London and Paris and 

 Berlin, had entertained me with fascin- 

 ating discourses on the phenomena of 

 nature. One night, when the setting-in of 

 frost was shown by the transfiguration of 

 Piccadilly from muddy dinginess into a 

 steely-gray sparkling under the electric 

 glow. Dr. Messel had dwelt on the fact 

 that water is the only fluid which expands 

 in freezing. If it contracted, instead of 

 expanding, all living creatures in the lakes 

 and streams would, he had said, become 

 extinct. The settling of the ice would 

 begin at the bottom ; and when the 



