66 FISH CULTUEE. 



closer, you find that one of your fish has thrown off 

 its shell, and emerged to life. 



" Take it up tenderly, 

 Treat it witli care, 

 Fashioned so — ■" 



Ko, not "slenderly," for a more unwieldy, delicate, 

 clumsy, welcome little stranger does not exist to 

 gladden the eyes of the delighted pisciculturist 

 withal. 'Now you have it in the little glass reser- 

 voir, with a drop or two of water around and over 

 it, imder the microscope. How it wriggles and 

 kicks ! what vigorous vitality is here, in this little 

 curious object ! Wow it is quiescent, and what a 

 wondrous spectacle is revealed to you ! Is this a fish 

 or a new kiud of tadpole ? Verily, Sir Philosopher, 

 it is of fish, fishy — ^though not, perchance, fishlike. 

 Could this strange, helpless little thing ever become 

 the magnificent twenty-pounder, that takes you down 

 with breathless haste, with bending rod and whizzing 

 reel, stumbling and panting, full five hundred yards 

 of that terrific torrent, and flinging somersaults that 

 rival those of the deftest acrobat, gives you a full half- 

 hour's hard work and awful excitement in the Devil's- 

 hole below? Can this little marvel, I say, be the 

 foundation of that which has had hundreds of laws 

 made for it, thousands of pages of reports collected 



