Having an odd fish in sight when by the river’s side, I am never lonely. Odd fish are too plentiful in town; never a glut of them—the proper sort—in the water. The average minnow is an endless source of amusement. Its rough and tumble existence is encouraging to striving mortals. The minnow’s ingenuity is hourly taxed to escape danger, yet never have I seen one in despair. To-day was a red-letter one in this respect. Off in a shallow pool, not two yards square, was a huge hump-backed minnow. Its spine was as twisted as a corkscrew, and its locomotion as erratic as lightning. How could such a fish secure its prey? was the question that puzzled me; and, failing to hit upon a solution, I tried to capture the fish for my aquarium. When one has neither net, line, nor other device, fishing is uncertain, except with the professional liars. I tried scooping with my hands, and have only to relate as a result that the hump-backed minnow appeared to make a springboard of its tail and leap over my hands with the grace and ease of a professional acrobat. After several attempts on my part to circumvent the minnow, it suddenly disappeared. I looked in vain for it all through the little pool. It had gone. At last I stepped back to turn to new scenes, when the hump-backed minnow leaped from a pebble on the water’s edge, with about the agility of a frog! Of course, this will go the way of all fish stories; but I do not mind telling it, for all that. It is the unexpected that happens—a remark, by the way, that dates B. C.—when the rambler has no particular quest in mind. I had almost forgotten that birds were in existence, when a large one ran along the pebbly beach, not more than a rod before me. It was a king-rail. With the thoughtlessness characteristic of a half fool, I hurled a stone after it, with the usual result of frightening it and so losing a golden opportunity to observe a rather rare bird at a most unusual season. Why will people be such ninnies? If a companion had been with me and attempted this, I would have prevented him; yet, nine times in ten, I give way to the unfortunate impulse to capture, if not destroy, the rarer creatures I meet. Had I been born without arms, I would by this time have become a naturalist. This tendency is due, without doubt, to our non-human ancestry, but will we never outgrow it?