But there are, let us hope, among our farmers’ sons and daughters, some who are learning to take an interest in the objects of nature which are beautiful, as well as in those which are useful.  To them I will say, if you wish to see something really pretty, make a seine from an old coffee sack or a piece of mosquito netting, and any day in spring drag two or three ripples of the branch which flows through the wood’s pasture, and ten chances to one you will get some “rainbows.”  By placing them in a fruit jar three-fourths full of clear, cold water, and renewing the water every few hours, they can be kept for several days; but they cannot bear the confinement long, accustomed as they are to the free running stream from which they were taken.

By taking the rainbow as the type of the darter and studying closely its habits, both in captivity and in the streams, much can be learned about a group which, in the words of Dr. S. A. Forbes, “are the mountaineers among fishes.  Forced from the populous and fertile valleys of the river beds and lake bottoms, they have taken refuge from their enemies in the rocky highlands where the free waters play in ceaseless torrents, and there they have wrested from stubborn nature a meagre living.  Although diminished in size by their continual struggle with the elements, they have developed an activity and hardihood, a vigor of life and a glow of high color almost unknown among the easier livers of the lower lands.”

II.—­THE LONG-EARED SUNFISH.

Among the most brightly colored of all the fresh-water members of the finny tribe is the long-eared sunfish.  When full grown its length is about eight inches and the breadth one-half as much.  The color is then a brilliant blue and orange, the former predominating above; the orange on the sides in spots, the blue in wavy, vertical streaks.  The cheeks are orange with bright blue stripes; the fins with the membranes orange, and the rays blue.  Extending back from the hind margin of each cheek is a conspicuous blackish membrane termed an “ear-flap,” which in this species is longer than in any other of the sun-fish family, whence the specific name, megalotis, from two Greek words meaning “great” and “ear.”

[Illustration:  LONG-EARED SUNFISH.]

Within the placid pools of the brooks and larger streams of the State this sunfish has its favorite haunts.  Mid-summer is the time when its habits can be best observed.  On a recent August morn I sat for an hour or longer on the banks of a stream, which flows through a wooded blue-grass pasture, and watched the denizens of its waters.  A peaceful calm existed, the water being without a ripple and with scarce the semblance of a flow—­the air without the shadow of a breeze.  Dragon flies lazily winged their way across the pool, now resting daintily upon a blade of sedge or swamp grass, now dipping the tips of their abdomens beneath the surface of the water while depositing their eggs.  The only sounds of nature were the buzz of a bumble-bee feeding among the flowers of the Brunella at my side, and an occasional drawl of a dog-day locust from the branches of the sycamore which threw a grateful shade about me.