For forty years
it had hidden itself away, growing and blossoming and casting
abroad its tiny seeds in its watery home, unseen, or at least
unnoticed, by living soul, save by the keen, soft, limpid eyes of
Fishin' Jimmy. And he knew the trees and shrubs so well: the alder
and birch from which as a boy he cut his simple, pliant pole; the
shad-blow and iron-wood (he called them, respectively, sugarplum
and hard-hack) which he used for the more ambitious rods of maturer
years; the mooseberry, wayfaring-tree, hobble-bush, or triptoe,--it
has all these names, with stout, trailing branches, over which he
stumbled as he hurried through the woods and underbrush in the
darkening twilight.
He had never heard of entomology. Guenee, Hubner, and Fabricius
were unknown names; but he could have told these worthies many new
things. Did they know just at what hour the trout ceased leaping
at dark fly or moth, and could see only in the dim light the
ghostly white miller? Did they know the comparative merits, as a
tempting bait, of grasshopper, cricket, spider, or wasp; and could
they, with bits of wool, tinsel, and feather, copy the real
dipterous, hymenopterous, or orthopterous insect? And the birds:
he knew them as do few ornithologists, by sight, by sound, by
little ways and tricks of their own, known only to themselves and
him.
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