THE PONDS. 
211 
comparatively shallow, and not remarkably pure. A 
walk through the woods thither was often my recreation. 
It was worth the while, if only to feel the wind blow on 
your cheek freely, and see the waves run, and remem¬ 
ber the life of mariners. I went a-chestnutting there in 
the fall, on windy days, when the nuts were dropping 
into the water and were washed to my feet; and one 
day, as I crept along its sedgy shore, the fresh spray 
blowing in my face, I came upon the mouldering wreck 
of a boat, the sides gone, and hardly more than the im¬ 
pression of its fiat bottom left amid the rushes; yet its 
model was sharply defined, as if it were a large decayed 
pad, with its veins. It was as impressive a wreck as 
one could imagine on the sea-shore, and had as good a 
moral. It is by this time mere vegetable mould and 
undistinguishable pond shore, through which rushes and 
flags have pushed up. I used to admire the ripple 
marks on the sandy bottom, at the north end of this 
pond, made firm and hard to the feet of the wader by 
the pressure of the water, and the rushes which grew in 
Indian file, in waving lines, corresponding to these 
marks, rank behind rank, as if the waves had planted 
them. There also I have found, in considerable quanti¬ 
ties, curious balls, composed apparently of fine grass or 
roots, of pipewort perhaps, from half an inch to four 
inches in diameter, and perfectly spherical. These 
wash back and forth in shallow water on a sandy bot¬ 
tom, and are sometimes cast on the shore. They are 
either solid grass, or have a little sand in the middle. 
At first you would say that they were formed by the ac¬ 
tion of the waves, like a pebble; yet the smallest are 
made of equally coarse materials, half an inch long, and 
they are produced only at one season of the year. 
