Their life proved not without its shadows, however, as very often their merriment was changed to terror in a twinkling. It happened that a gorgeous dragon-fly came with a sudden onset to the little brook and filled these fish with fear while it hovered above them. I leave it to others to say why the minnows should have been afraid. Has any person ever seen a dragon-fly catch a fish? Prof. Seeley, writing of a European cyprinoid, remarks, “Probably every person who has ever looked into a small stream has been surprised by the singular way in which minnows constantly arrange themselves in circles like the petals of a flower, with their heads nearly meeting in the center, and tails diverging at equal distances.” I looked for this, but our Jersey minnows were not so methodically inclined, and all kept their heads in one direction, up-stream, until at a certain point, when, as if on signal given, they would, right about face, and dart down-stream for a yard or two, re-form, and as a company make their way to the dispersing point, a thin slab of stone that barred their further passage. So, in this most unpromising spot I found no end of entertainment, and, except in midsummer, would not have tired of any single feature; but study, even studies a-field, are irksome in July, and I forgot the minnows as my eyes fell upon a large slab of stone near where I was lying. It was one of four broad stepping-stones that nearly two centuries ago were placed here. Then, there flowed, through a thick woods, a broad stream, and near here the first house was built. Upon these stones had stepped the grave elders and loitered the light-hearted children of three generations; and now not a trace of house, garden, barn, woods, or pasture remains. Everything has given way to more pretentious structures, broader fields, and painfully angular highways. The one-time winding lane, shaded by noble oaks, is now not even to be traced across the fields; and, instead thereof, a narrow sunny strip of yellow sand leads to the public road. “What an improvement!” once remarked a neighbor, when the change was made. What an improvement, indeed! where once was beauty, one finds, save this little remnant of a creek, an endless array of fields, with scarcely a tree along the division fences. Doubtless, could the brook have been obliterated, the work would have been undertaken. As it is, the narrow strip is all that Nature can call her own, and so, whatever of her charms can find a place, here she sets them down; and so here a rambler may be happy, or fairly content at least, if he does not raise his eyes continually to scan the horizon. I, for one, on the half-loaf principle, accept the wayside brooks with thankfulness, and now after long years have found that in many an essential feature they do not suffer so greatly as one might suppose when compared with Nature’s more pretentious waterways. Let Nature, on however small a scale, have the upper hand, and at such a