THE YOUNG SCIENTIST. 
71 
poor things produce sickly and abortive 
leaves, till they drop down, a decaying 
mass. And this wretched barber thinks 
this all wonderful and beautiful. I pray 
that the young readers of this journal will 
never be guilty of torturing such honest 
vegetables and good taste in this barber- 
ous way. But fix up your window as I 
have mine, and the ladies from far and 
near will exclaim, " Oh ! isn't it perfectly 
beautiful." 
The Hunted Fisherman. 
BY A. W. ROBERTS. 
I HAD now turned my attention to col- 
lecting fish and other aquatic ani- 
mals, as well as plants. A small nest- 
building fish known as the three-spined 
stickle-back being in great demand, and 
selling as high as twenty-five cents a pair 
for breeders in good color, I determined 
to secure a good quantity of them from a 
pond situated a mile from the old home- 
stead in Williamsburg, N. Y. 
This pond occupied the same ground on 
Broadway where now stands the German 
Savings Bank, and Tuttle's coal yard, and 
was fed by a small stream that flowed in 
from Wallabout Bay through Johnston's 
woods, causing the water to be brackish. 
Up this stream the stickle-backs ascended 
every spring from the salt water of the 
bay to the fresh water to breed. When 
Broadway was laid out and graded, the stic- 
kle-backs became land-locked, and dwarfed 
in size, but, most strange of all, took to 
building their nests in communities, one 
male fish often attending many nests. 
These fish were very shy, and, on the ap- 
proach of any one, would retreat to deep 
water, where the hand net was of no use ; 
so I constructed a small seine of mosquito 
netting, using bottle corks for the " cork 
line," and bits of lead pipe for the " lead 
line." For the "warp lines " I used two 
clothes lines; the ''staffs" consisted of 
turned pickets. 
The night I had set for trying the seine 
was cloudy, with now and then a bit of 
moonshine breaking through. Just the 
kind of night I desired, as the stickle- 
backs would not be so easily alarmed. 
~So at one o'clock in the morning I might 
have been seen climbing out of my bed- 
room window to the roof of the kitchen, 
whence I reached the garden by a ladder 
previously placed in position. 
Dressed in a suit of old garden clothes 
and shoes, and provided with two pails 
and the seine, I felt confident of securing 
at least one hundred and fifty before re- 
turning home, which would yield me 
$3.50 ; not a bad night's work for a young- 
ster. 
Beaching the pond at two o'clock, I felt 
safe from all intrusion and questionings 
from curious passers by, and possible dis- 
covery by other collectors, whom I had 
often noticed following me. This pond lay 
in the beat of a certain iDoliceman, a very 
ugly, cross fellow, who was particularly 
" down " on all small boys, who, in lieu 
of a better name, christened him " Tight 
Lips." His beat being a very long one, I 
was in hopes that he would not come my 
way before I was through, or that he would 
take a nap in one of the engine houses. 
The houses near the pond were few and 
far between ; not a light was to be seen nor 
a sound to be heard, except the occasional 
croaking of a frog. I determined to make 
my first haul near the upper end of the 
pond, in the centre of which projected a 
large post. From this post I intended to 
work one end of the seine in shore again. 
Tying the end of one of the warp lines to a 
stone, I took off all my clothes preparatory 
to swimming out to the projecting post. 
I could not wade out, for the reason that 
at the bottom of the pond were numerous 
broken glass bottles, and years before 
this place became a pond, there was a brick 
kiln which had left deep pits, where the 
water now stood ten and fifteen feet deep. 
So placing my shoes and clothing in the 
pails, I slid gently into the water, hold- 
ing on to the end of the warp line with my 
teeth. I had but just reached the post, 
when I heard a policeman's club rattling 
a playful sort of tattoo against the numer- 
ous large rocks that bordered the foot- 
path of the road. In an instant I was 
all under water but my head, and that 
was securely hidden behind the post. I 
now waited breathlessly for him (it was 
" Tight Lips ") to pass on, hoping that he 
might not observe my clothing standing 
on the bank ; but just as he was about to 
