70 
** The above paragraph sets out with a truism that might as 
well have been omitted. Constituted in all other respects as 
it is, there is no denying that the Flying-fish, if deprived of 
its pectoral fins, must soon cease to exist; but so would every 
other fish subjected to a similar amputation, By the same 
rule of reasoning it would not be diffieult to prove that the 
human race owe their existence to their legs, for if they were 
docked of their locomotive members, the species must soon 
be annihilated. But until mankind lose their legs, and the 
* Ezocetus’ their wings, we may rest assured that both will 
multiply as fast as the sea and the earth will supply them 
with food. 
* Sound reason has not a more active or insidious foe than 
this morbid sensibility, which addresses itself to the heart 
instead of the head, endeavouring to work on our sym- 
pathy at the expense of our understanding. This is the rock 
that lies perpetually in the way of sentimental travellers and 
novelists, and on which they never fail to strike. They select 
for themselves an individual or a species, a flea, or a flying- 
fish, or a Welsh Curate, no matter what it is, provided it be 
sufficiently weak, and can be made sufficiently miserable. 
They make this a type, clothe it with all the attributes of 
interest, and overwhelm it with all the cireumstances of love, 
then cry over their work till their imagination becomes heated, 
and they see in the whole round of creation nothing but 
rapine, oppression, and misrule. These enthusiasts never 
raise their eye from the individual that has thus fixed their 
attention, or look up to the steady march of nature, in which - 
partial evil is made subservient to universal good. They are 
ever sighing after the happy age of gold, when the flying-fish 
played at hide and seek with the albicore, the wolf slept with 
the lamb, and the lion ate grass like an ox. But peopleof 
sober minds, who suffer not their imagination to run away with — 
their judgment, reasoning on what has been from what actu- 
ally is, are agreed that such an age never did exist, and never 
can exist, while the laws remain in force which the PER has 
imposed on his sublunary works. 
* From the astonishing power of reproduction REER inthe 
