He knew, too, all the strange, beautiful
under-water growth: bladderwort in long, feathery garlands,
pellucid water-weed, quillwort in stiff little bunches with
sharp-pointed leaves of olive-green,--all so seldom seen save by
the angler whose hooks draw up from time to time the wet, lovely
tangle.  I remember the amusement with which a certain well-known
botanist, who had journeyed to the mountains in search of a little
plant, found many years ago near Echo Lake, but not since seen,
heard me propose to consult Fishin' Jimmy on the subject.  But I
was wiser than he knew.  Jimmy looked at the specimen brought as an
aid to identification.  It was dry and flattened, and as unlike a
living, growing plant as are generally the specimens from an
herbarium.  But it showed the awl-shaped leaves, and thread-like
stalk with its tiny round seed-vessels, like those of our common
shepherd's-purse, and Jimmy knew it at once.  "There's a dreffle
lot o' that peppergrass out in deep water there, jest where I
ketched the big pick'ril," he said quietly.  "I seen it nigh a foot
high, an' it 's juicier and livin'er than them dead sticks in your
book."  At our request he accompanied the unbelieving botanist and
myself to the spot; and there, looking down through the sunlit
water, we saw great patches of that rare and long-lost plant of the
Cruciferse known to science as Subularia aquatica.  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.  The white-throat sparrow with its sweet, far-reaching chant;
the hermit-thrush with its chime of bells in the calm summer
twilight; the vesper-sparrow that ran before him as he crossed the
meadow, or sang for hours, as he fished the stream, its unvarying,
but scarcely monotonous little strain; the cedar-bird, with its
smooth brown coast of Quaker simplicity, and speech as brief and
simple as Quaker yea or nay; the winter-wren sending out his
strange, lovely, liquid warble from the high, rocky side of Cannon
Mountain; the bluebird of the early spring, so welcome to the
winter-weary dwellers in that land of ice and show, as he

  "From the bluer deeps
  Lets fall a quick, prophetic strain,"

of summer, of streams freed and flowing again, of waking, darting,
eager fish; the veery, the phoebe, the jay, the vireo,--all these
were friends, familiar, tried and true to Fishin' Jimmy.  The cluck
and coo of the cuckoo, the bubbling song of bobolink in buff and
black, the watery trill of the stream-loving swamp-sparrow, the
whispered whistle of the stealthy, darkness-haunting whippoorwill,
the gurgle and gargle of the cow-bunting,--he knew each and all,
better than did Audubon, Nuttall, or Wilson.  But he never dreamed
that even the tiniest of his little favorites bore, in the
scientific world, far away from that quiet mountain nest, such
names as Troglodytes hyemalis or Melospiza palustris.  He could
tell you, too, of strange, shy creatures rarely seen except by the
early-rising, late-fishing angler, in quiet, lonesome places: the
otter, muskrat, and mink of ponds and lakes,--rival fishers, who
bore off prey sometimes from under his very eyes,--field-mice in
meadow and pasture, blind, burrowing moles, prickly hedge-hogs,
brown hares, and social, curious squirrels.

Sometimes he saw deer, in the early morning or in the dusk of the
evening, as they came to drink at the lake shore, and looked at him
with big, soft eyes not unlike his own.  Sometimes a shaggy bear
trotted across his path and hid himself in the forest, or a
sharp-eared fox ran barking through the bushes.  He loved to tell
of these things to us who cared to listen, and I still seem to hear
his voice saying in hushed tones, after a story of woodland sight
or sound: "Nobody don't see 'em but fishermen.  Nobody don't hear
'em but fishermen."