SHRIMPS AIvD PRAWNS. 83 



skrimps (2fysis vulgaris) peopling the Northern and 

 Arctic seas, serve to furnish food for the vast shoals 

 of these fish, during their annual visits and migrations 

 to salt water. " The Whalebone," "Eight," or Greenland 

 Whale, would soon become as extinct as the mastadon, 

 if any shrimp-disease should, in an untimely manner, 

 carry off the lively little opossum. Away among the 

 ice-fields of the for north, where the drifting floes and 

 crashing bergs drift onward before the gale, and 

 where, as wdnter sets in, the polar bears and Arctic 

 foxes, feel hard times, and are at a loss for a dinner, 

 our huge leviathan acquaintance, the whale, holds high 

 festival ; merely opening his cavernous mouth wide 

 enough for a deluge of water to rush in, and then by 

 a sudden effort, sending it out again, through the 

 numerous strainers and fringes, with which nature has 

 gifted him. 



" The sounds and seas, each creek and bay, 

 With fry innumerable swarm, and shoals 

 Of fish that with their fins and shining scales 

 Glide under the green wave, in sculls that oft 

 Bank the mid-sea : part single or with mate 

 Graze, the sea-weed their pasture, and through groves 

 Of coral stray ; or sporting with quick glance. 

 Show to the sun their waved coats dropped with gold 

 Or, in their pearly shells at ease, attend 

 Moist nutriment ; or under rocks their food 

 In jointed armour watch ; on smooth the sea] 

 And bended dolphins play : part huge of bulk, 

 Wallowing unwieldy, enormous in their gait. 



g2 



