662 SUPPLEMENT ON 



all created animals, powers of reproduction great beyond 

 calculation ; of individual growth surprisingly rapid, and in 

 many species of long continuance ; while at the same time 

 their duration of life is no less protracted ? Surely, that they 

 might fill space, by peopling a particular element, or multiply 

 and subsist by mutual destruction, cannot be the only objects 

 of their existence. As a class, fish most undoubtedly answer 

 purposes we may never fully comprehend; one of them, 

 however, we can assume, namely, that they should be in 

 their proportion subservient to the wants of man. 



Independently of the concession we have upon sacred 

 authority, man in the rudest state of savage life is forcibly 

 impelled to assuage hunger by means of aquatic animals. 

 Molluscous and crustaceous genera adhere to rocks, repose 

 upon the sands, traverse the flats exposed by the receding 

 of the tides ; small fry play in the remaining pools ; beings 

 of various classes cluster among the seaweed; and all tempt 

 the savage in want of food to avail himself first of what is 

 obvious on the dry spaces, next to wade, and soon to swim 

 and dive after his prey ; few or no aids are required from 

 mechanical skill, nor are exertions of sagacity or experience 

 necessary to enable him to dig out of the sand, to scoop, to 

 noose, or strike his victims. As the primitive savage may 

 have done, the New Hollander still dives for fish ; the Malay- 

 wades after them ; the rudest men know that they can be 

 intoxicated with herbs, intrapt in weirs, intercepted at 

 shallows, and speared in many ways. The temptations to 

 trust to the produce of the waters for subsistence, held out at 

 first by the facility of success, were moreover among the 

 most direct of the remote causes which led to civilization : 

 for though the advantage of swimming in the pursuit of fish, 

 was only a first step, which gradually caused man to improve 

 upon his means by substituting a log, then a catamaran, 

 a brace of hollow gourds, a balsa, a goma of bulrushes, a 



