ical ripple, he nevertheless
avoided the depths that were sufficient for the free hunting of the
predatory minnows and redfins. Such of his kinsfolk as stayed farther
out soon served, the greater number of them, as food for the larger
river dwellers, while those who went too close inshore got cast up on
the sand to die, or were pounced upon, as they lay close to the
surface, by ravenous and unerring mosquitoes, which managed to pierce
them even through a film of water a sixteenth of an inch or more in
thickness. So it came about in a very brief time that of the countless
throng emerging from the nest on the bar there remained but a hundred or
so of the tiny fry to sustain the fortunes of that particular salmon
family.

Even at the safest and most cunningly chosen depth, however, the little
pioneer had plenty of perils to guard against. Secure from the suckers
and redfins on the one hand, and from the mosquitoes on the other, he
had yet for enemies certain predatory larvae and water-beetles, as well
as a few inch-long youngsters of the trout family, who were very active
and rapacious. There was a water-beetle with hooked, pincer-like jaws
and lightning rapidity of movement, which kept him almost ceaselessly on
the alert, and filled him with wholesome terror as he saw it capture and
devour numbers of his less nimble or less wary kin. And one day, when he
had chanced, in the company of his diminished school of fry, to drift
into a shallow cove where there was no current at all to disturb the
water, he was chased by the terrible larva of a dragon-fly. The
strange-looking creature, with what seemed a blank, featureless mask
where its face and jaws ought to be, darted at him under the propulsion
of jets of water sucked into its middle and spurted out behind. Having
taken alarm in time, he made good his escape between the stalks of a
fine water-weed where the big larva could not penetrate. From this
retreat he saw his pursuer turn and pounce upon a small basking minnow.
The mask that covered the larva's face shot out as if on a hinge,
developed into two powerful, grappling claws, and clutched the victim in
the belly. After a brief struggle, which terrified all the tiny
creatures within a radius of three feet, the minnow was dragged down to
a clump of weed and the victor proceeded to make his feast. The little
salmon stole in terror from his hiding-place and darted out into the
more strenuous but for him far safer waters where