ch partook of the nature of all
three, and which came together on the infant's soft, helpless little
body like a pair of tongs or the jaws of a steel trap, and drew him in
to where the real jaws were waiting to make mince-meat of him. Our
friend fled so precipitately that he did not see the end of the tragedy,
but neither did he ever see that baby again. Before the summer had
passed, the dull, lumpish-looking creature had become a magnificent
insect, with long, gauzy wings, clad in glittering mail, and known to
everybody as a dragon-fly, but I doubt if any of his performances in the
upper air were ever half as dragon-like as the deeds of darkness that he
did when he was an ugly, shapeless larva down under the water.

Fortunately, not all the larvae in the stream were thus to be feared.
Many were so small that the Troutlet could eat them, instead of letting
them eat him; and nowhere were they more plentiful than in this same
forest of water-weeds. His first taste of food was a great experience,
and gave him some entirely new ideas of life. One day he was lying with
his head up-stream, as was his usual habit, when a particularly fat,
plump little larva, torn from his home by the remorseless river, came
drifting down with the current. He looked very tempting, and our friend
sallied out from under a stick and caught him on the fly, just as he had
seen the star-gazer catch his own brother. The funny little creature
wriggled deliciously on his tongue, and he held him between his jaws for
a moment in a kind of ecstasy; but he couldn't quite make up his mind to
swallow him, and presently he spat him out again and went back to the
shadow of his stick to rest and think about it. It was the first time in
his life that he had ever done such a thing, and he felt rather
overwhelmed, but an hour or two later he tried it again, and this time
the living morsel did not stop in his mouth, but went straight on down.

It was really something more than a new experience--this first mouthful
of food--for it marked a turning-point in his career. Up to this time he
had lived entirely on the provisions which his parents had left him, but
henceforth he was independent and could take care of himself. He was no
longer an embryo; he was a real fish, a genuine _Salvelinus fontinalis_,
as carnivorous as the biggest and fiercest of all his relations. The
cleft in his breast might close up now, and the last remnant of his
yolk-sac vanish forever. He was