Page:Summer - from the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau.djvu/211

Rh, where the muskrats bask, and overhead a canopy of leaves conceals the birds and shuts out the sun. It is hard to realize that the seeds of all this growth were buried in that bare, frozen earth.

In the little meadow pool or bog in Hubbard's shore I see two old pouts tending their countless young close to the shore. The former are slate-colored, the latter are about half an inch long, and very black, forming a dark mass from eight to twelve inches in diameter. The old one constantly circles around them, over, and under, and through, as if anxiously endeavoring to keep them together, from time to time moving off five or six feet to reconnoitre. The whole mass of the young, and there must be a thousand of them at least, is incessantly moving, pushing forward and stretching out. They are often in the form of a great pout, apparently keeping together by their own instinct chiefly, now on the bottom, now rising to the top. The old, at any rate, do not appear to be very successful in their apparent efforts to communicate with and direct them. Alone they might be mistaken for pollywogs. At length they break into four parts.

The Indians say this fish hatches its young in a hole in the mud, and that they accompany her for some time afterwards. Yet in Ware's