20 SCIENCE SKETCHES. 
JOHNNY DARTERS)! 
NY one who has ever been a boy and can 
remember back to the days of tag-alders, 
yellow cowslips, and an angle-worm on a pin-hook, 
will recall an experience like this: You tried some 
time to put your finger on a little fish that was 
lying, apparently asleep, on the bottom of the 
stream, half hidden under a stone or a leaf, his 
tail bent around the stone as if for support against 
the force of the current. You will remember that 
when your finger came near the spot where he was 
lying, the bent tail was straightened, and you saw 
the fish again resting, head up-stream, a few feet 
away, leaving you puzzled to know whether you 
had seen the movement or not. You were trying 
to catch a Johnny Darter. Nothing seems easier, 
but you did not do it. 
Having by well-understood stratagem succeeded 
where you failed, allow us to give you that ac- 
quaintance which he so deftly declined. 
In all clear streams from Maine to Mexico the 
Johnny Darters are found; and the boy who does 
not know them has missed one of the real pleas- 
ures of a boy’s life. All of them are very little 
fishes, — some not more than two inches long, and 
1 The original version of this paper was the joint work of the 
late Professor Herbert Edson Copeland and the writer. — D. S. J. 
