I watched them coming down from July through October and into November, from the lush green of early summer to the red and brown of dry weeks in August, and on to the cool days of autumn when the sea turned a brighter blue and winds and clouds blew full--all the way almost to the hardening in of winter and its sullen skies. The alewife is a part of the life of Stony Brook and the ponds above it for at least seven months out of the year. And the fact that so many return again to the particularity, the uniqueness of these waters is a reminder of the power of living form and place together, the welding of those strands of near and far in the body of a fish, the body of the world. The fish egg rolls around on a greater axis than its own. So the first of the tiny fish came down by the thousands during the first week in July. After that there was hardly a day until the middle of August when there were not at least a few to be seen in the brook. Gradually they grew larger, so that in August they were up to two inches on the average. The next big movement, after an August lull, began on September 6 and 7. Their size by then had increased to between two and two and one-half inches. A few were considerably larger. I measured one at the surprising length of four and one-half inches, and another, which escaped my net, looked to be well over five. It was easy enough to get a sampling, because they had a tendency, owing to their very light weight perhaps, to be caught at the bottom of the little falls that poured out of each resting pool in the ladder. They were tossed, turned, tumbled in the bubbling water, flung out from it but returning to be tossed again. On the surface of that turbulence they sometimes managed like gulls riding drafts of wind, but then they would drop down and under and be carried off to the edge once more. This would go on for a long time, although they were very gradually dropping down the brook. Because of this tendency of theirs I was able to scoop them out of the falls with a sieve--although the larger they were the more elusive. I noticed their absence during a number of cloudy and rainy days in September and their return when the sun shone; which is not to say that I did not see them on overcast days too, but the good days started them going. They responded to warmth like the adults. Beginning in October the next schools of fish coming down had increased in size, so that the average seemed to have gone up to about two and three-quarters to three inches. This movement, off and on, kept up until the end of the month. I saw one last small group coming in to the upper falls on November 16.