Page:Sea and River-side Rambles in Victoria.djvu/118

99 for ever fixed. Strange transition from the roving life of the animal to the fixed existence of the plants." Of these Freshwater Algae, we may find here specimens of Conferva, Chara, Zygnema, Draparnaldia, Cladophora, Œdogonium, and many others, probably many species of each. Not useless are these minute plants either, affording as they do, food to so many tiny inhabitants of the water, and acting as purifiers to the water in which they dwell, decomposing and removing all that is noxious, and restoring to the water oxygen, which as we have previously stated, is essential to animal life.

In a former chapter we have recorded the Limnæa, Physa, and Planorbis as being abundant here, but on every one of the trees lying half in, half out of the water, are long dark shells (Unio), and from the way in which one end is invariably broken, they are evidently brought there by some creature which feeds on the dwellers within them, either the Bittern or the Water-Rat.

We have been fishing during our stroll, but it is sorry work, not a nibble scarcely but from a host of tittlebats or some such small fry, which at every cast of our bait have been raising our hopes to the highest pitch of expectancy;—we have changed it a dozen times, and our hooks as many more, but without success; still we can recommend our friends devoted to the sport to make a trial on the upper portions of this river, where Trout, Black Fish, and Eels may be taken and afford some sport. Well, if we cannot fill our creel there is nothing which so thoroughly refreshes us as a ramble away from the conventionalities of town