The many aspects of a brook--The eye sees only that which it is capable
of seeing--Individuality of brooks and their banks--The rippling
"burnie" of the hills--The gently-flowing brooks of low-lying
districts--Individualities even of such brooks--The fresh-water brooks
of Oxford and the tidal brooks of the Kentish marshes--The swarming life
in which they abound--An afternoon's walk--Ditches versus hedges and
walls--A brook in Cannock Chase--Its sudden changes of aspect--The
brooks of the Wiltshire Downs and of Derbyshire.


A brook has many points of view.

In the first place, scarcely any two spectators see it in the same
light.

To the rustic it is seldom more than a convenient water-tank, or, at
most, as affording some sport to boys in fishing. To its picturesque
beauties his eyes are blind, and to him the brook is, like Peter Bell's
primrose, a brook and nothing more.

Then there are some who only view a brook as affording variety to the
pursuit of the fox, and who pride themselves on their knowledge of the
spots at which it can be most successfully leaped.

Others, again, who are of a geographical turn of mind, can only see in a
brook a necessary portion of the water-shed of the district.

To children it is for a time dear as a playground, possessing the
inestimable advantage of enabling them to fall into it and wet their