62 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



Fig. 10.— Scale or Perch. 



little leisure to indulge them. But lie had already inoculated his 

 only son with a love for such subjects. Willie, however, had 

 never before been drawn within the magic circle of enthusiasm 



for them, and his highly 

 sensitive temperament was 

 fixed by the professor's de- 

 scriptions and demonstra- 

 tions immediately. Before 

 the term was half over, he 

 was a member of the so- 

 ciety, and doing his best to 

 " collect " for the society's 

 museum. 



Jack had many a hearty 

 laugh over this disposition 

 to hoard up a lot of old 

 stones and things, and give 

 them hard names. More 

 than once he was asked to 

 attend a society's meeting 

 —for each member had the privilege of introducing a friend — but 

 he always shirked it. " No/' he said ; " they are not my sort." 



One wet evening, however, Willie B,ansome got Jack to go, 

 just because there was 

 nothing else to do. There 

 was a short paper being 

 read on " Fish-Scales," 

 and a number of them 

 were mounted for micro- 

 scopical examination, of 

 course with a low power, 

 say inch and half -inch. 

 Anything relating to fish 

 or fishing was certain to 

 gain Jack's attention, 

 therefore a better sub- 

 ject could not have been 

 selected to engage his no- 

 tice. Besides, Jack had 

 never yet even looked 

 through a microscope ! 

 He felt a bit ashamed of 



this now ; but there were a couple of microscopes present, and 

 Jack determined to have a good look through them. The scales 

 of different sorts of British fishes were on view. Of course, fish- 

 scales are common enough ; but who would think that each kind 



Fig. 11.— Scale of Common Carp. 



