74 
THE YOUNG SCIENTIST. 
The Crawfish and the Minnow. 
A FISH STOEY IN RHYME. 
BY L, M. HOSEA. 
A pert little crawfish, crustaceous and fat. 
Voting ancestral shingles and shallows a bore, 
Determined one day, 'spite of warnings and all that 
His elders could say, to remain there no more ; 
But to see the great world in the deeper blue water, 
And the wonders of mid-channel far from the shore. 
" You silly young brachi'pod "—spoke his old granny, 
(Hard-shell old Baptist, with claws like a vice), 
"Don't be a fool, like the genus humani, 
" Those air-breathing bipeds who never grow wise, 
"Except in exchange of expensive experience. 
"Be happy at home, sir; there! that's my advice." 
Then big Papa Crawfish : ' ' Out there in the brine 
" Are Ichthyosauri, and terrible Ptero- 
"Dactylian reptiles, and catfish a-sighin' 
"For juicy young headstrong crustaceans, who ne'er o- 
" Vercame their propensity backward to wander, 
" And hold their papa's admonitions at zero." 
"Pooh! " quoth this impertinent juv'nal, "keep easy! 
" Tell that to marines ! D'ye see any green ? " 
And he put up one claw to his eye. "As for Ichthy- 
" O'Soreeye, that's thin, much too thin to be seen. 
"And as for that Terry Dac-what's-his name, why — 
"Just let me alone ; I'll run my machine." 
Well, nothing would do this precocious knight-errant 
But to wander abroad in the wide wat'ry world, 
Over shingle and mud-bank, out into the current— 
The pitiless current— that seized him and hurled 
Him far out among swift darting fish, in the torrent 
That rolled him and tossed him where angry waves curled. 
Affrighted, dismayed, clutching wildly at naught. 
Borne on by the flood in its fatal embrace, 
He at length on a rock in mid-channel was caught. 
And clung with despair to the shallowest place. 
Cruel fish sported round in the swift-moving wat- 
Er, where eddy chased eddy in mad whirling race. 
Old Crusoe was never so much isolated. 
On his little isle in the wide waste of sea, 
As this little decapod- lonely, ill-fated. 
Repentant young prisoner— bound by decree 
Of the water-god fast to that rock, as I've stated. 
With hungry fish waiting there under its lee. 
