Again and again the net sweeps among the weed, or dredges the bottom of the pond, bringing up mud, stones, sticks, with a fish, worms, molluscs, and tritons. The fish we must secure, for it is a stickleback—a pretty and interesting inhabitant of an aquarium, on account of its nest-building propensities. We are surprised at a fish building a nest, and caring for its young, like the tenderest of birds (and there are two other fishes, the Goramy and the Hassar, which have this instinct); but why not a fish, as well as a bird? The cat-fish swims about in company with her young, like a proud hen with her chickens; and the sun-fish hovers for weeks over her eggs, protecting them against danger.
The wind is so piercing, and my fingers are so benumbed, I can scarcely hold the brush. Moreover, continual stooping over the net makes the muscles ache unpleasantly, and suggests that each cast shall be the final one. But somehow I have made this resolution and broken it twenty times: either the cast has been unsuccessful, and one is provoked to try again, or it is so successful that, as l’appétit vient en mangeant, one is seduced again. Very unintelligible this would be to the passers-by, who generally cast contemptuous glances at us, when they find we are not fishing, but are only removing Nothings into a glass jar. One day an Irish labourer stopped and asked me if I were fishing for salmon. I quietly answered, “Yes.” He drew near. I continued turning over the weed, occasionally dropping an invisible thing into the water. At last, a large yellow-bellied Triton was dropped in. He begged to see it; and seeing at the same time how alive the water was with tiny animals, became curious, and asked many questions. I went on with my work; his interest and curiosity increased; his questions multiplied; he volunteered assistance; and remained beside me till I prepared to go away, when he said seriously: “Och! then, and it’s a fine thing to be able to name all God’s creatures.” Contempt had given place to reverence; and so it would be with others, could they check the first rising of scorn at what they do not understand, and patiently learn what even a roadside pond has of Nature’s wonders.
FOOTNOTES:
[17] Entomostraca (from entomos, an insect, and ostracon, a shell) are not really insects, but belong to the same large group of animals as the lobster, the crab, or the shrimp, i.e. crustaceans.
[18] The student will find ample information in Baird’s British Entomostraca, published by the Ray Society.
[19] Compare Gegenbaur: Grundzüge der vergleichende Anatomie, 1859, pp. 229 und 269; also Leydig über Hydatina senta, in Müller’s Archiv, 1857, p. 411.
[20] To avoid the equivoque of calling the parts of an animal, which are capable of independent existence, by the same term as the whole mass, we may adopt Huxley’s suggestion, and call all such individual parts zöoids, instead of animals. Duge’s suggested zöonites in the same sense.—Sur la Conformité Organigue, p. 13.
[21] Stein: Der Organismus der Infusionsthiere, 1859, pp. 36–38.
[22] Zoospores, from zoon, an animal, and sporos, a seed.
[23] Trembley in his admirable work. Mémoires pour servir à l’histoire d’une genre de Polypes d’eau douce, 1744, furnished science with the fullest and most accurate account of fresh-water Polypes; but it is a mistake to suppose that he was the original discoverer of this genus: old Leuwenhoek had been before him.