It Is A Gold Or Silver Bit That Passes Current
In The River, Its Limber Tail Dimpling The Surface In Sport Or
Flight.
I have seen the fry, when frightened by something thrown
into the water, leap out by dozens, together with the dace, and
wreck themselves upon a floating plank.
It is the little
light-infant of the river, with body armor of gold or silver
spangles, slipping, gliding its life through with a quirk of the
tail, half in the water, half in the air, upward and ever upward
with flitting fin to more crystalline tides, yet still abreast of
us dwellers on the bank. It is almost dissolved by the summer
heats. A slighter and lighter colored shiner is found in one of
our ponds.
The Pickerel, _Esox reticulatus_, the swiftest, wariest, and most
ravenous of fishes, which Josselyn calls the Fresh-Water or River
Wolf, is very common in the shallow and weedy lagoons along the
sides of the stream. It is a solemn, stately, ruminant fish,
lurking under the shadow of a pad at noon, with still,
circumspect, voracious eye, motionless as a jewel set in water,
or moving slowly along to take up its position, darting from time
to time at such unlucky fish or frog or insect as comes within
its range, and swallowing it at a gulp. I have caught one which
had swallowed a brother pickerel half as large as itself, with
the tail still visible in its mouth, while the head was already
digested in its stomach.
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