AETIFICIAL HATCHING OF SPAWN. 67 



on it, myriads of law- suits fought about it, Eoyal 

 Commissions without end imposed upon it ; treatises 

 unnumbered, by the greatest lights of science and 

 genius, concerning it ; by the catching of which 

 thousands live, and hundreds realize fortunes, or the 

 reverse ; which millions feed on ; and which should 

 be, if properly understood and treated, one of the 

 richest veins of our national wealth and subsist- 

 ence? Verily, indeed, wonderful are the works of 

 Providence ! Stay, let us look closer : a thin streak, 

 of almost transparent substance, about half an inch 

 in length, at one end of which two wonderfully 

 disproportioned eyes goggle at you through the 

 lens ; at the other end the thin streak turns upwards, 

 and forms the tail part, From immediately below 

 the throat, and along where the belly should be, 

 depends a huge, unwieldy, umbilical bladder, larger 

 than the egg it has just emerged from. This bladder 

 is distended with a clear gum-like liquid. Up 

 towards the throat are a collection of those oily 

 globules before noticed, when in the egg state, just 

 over them. Stay ; can that little red spot be the 

 heart ? As I live, it is ; and those thin filament- 

 like cords, extending from and branching off towards 

 the end of the bladder, are the veins. Now the red 

 heart pulsates; and the injected blood rushes, with 



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