142 
NATURE STUDY. 
was let free to take her children about, while the other 
mothers of her acquaintance had to stay in a barrel with 
slats across the end. How proudly she led them forth, 
and when they caught the sound of running water, and 
ran pell-mell for it, she followed with what haste she 
might ; but imagine her horror when she saw them actu¬ 
ally going in to that deadly water ! In vain she screamed 
and raved ; the ducklings contentedly floated and bobbed 
about, unheeding her cries. Suddenly the muskrat saw, 
and he swam stealthily out from his hiding-place under 
the bank, grabbed a little webbed foot, pulled it down under 
the water, and that duckling went to make a muskrat’s 
dinner. The child ran crying to the house and told the 
tragedy, and the men took down their guns and set their 
traps, and the doom of muskrats was sealed. 
The water was usually clear enough in the shoal to see 
all the fish. “ Nothin’ but shiners; no account except for 
bait.” So the hired man said ; but they were pretty, like 
silver, where they caught the light, with one dark stripe 
on the side, and the shoal was their nursily. They grew 
to think the child harmless, and spread themselves out in 
the sun fearlessly—always in perfect ranks, like soldiers, 
never half an inch variance, about fifty or sixty of the ba¬ 
bies half an inch long, of those a year old and one inch 
long only twenty or so, and those still larger and older 
were usually too few to be in ranks. The child sagely 
concluded they were “winter killed.” • She thinks now 
they were killed in winter—as well as in summer—but not 
by the cold. When quiet, the procession always swung 
with the stream—never across it. There was just a faint, 
sinuous movement, to keep themselves from being carried 
by the almost imperceptible current. Why has so little 
been said of the perfection of grace in every motion of a 
fish ? 
One early spring the child was given a brood of newly 
