PREFACE 



Whenever men have been terrified by the dangers of perfidious and hostile nature 

 and frightened by suffering and the dread of death, they have created divinities to 

 protect them and assuage their anguish. Above all else they worshipped the forces 

 of the world; the sun and the stars, sources of warmth and light ; the life-giving earth; 

 the moving and fruitful sea and the disquieting and deadly lightning. They knelt 

 before great trees overshadowing in their majesty the dark and rustling forest, and 

 before fearsome animals, symbols of living power. And the peoples who dwelt close 

 to the seas and rivers came to revere the fishes hidden in their peaceable and mysterious 

 retreats. 



Out of the primordial ocean, which existed at the origin of all things, when the 

 sky and the earth had yet to be named, the Chaldeans raised up three great gods, of 

 which Ea, the Oannes of the Greeks, " the Sublime Fish " , possessed wisdom and 

 perfect knowledge, for it is from the abyss that comes all learning. 



The Sumerians learnt arts and crafts from him, how to build with wood and 

 stone, to fashion clay and to forge metals. When other gods, dissatisfied with their 

 work, wanted to destroy men, he saved them and counselled them to build a great vessel 

 which sheltered their race and those of domesticated and wild animals when waters 

 were loosed to submerge the earth. 



In the manifold theogonies of India, Mshnu, supreme god of light and goodness 

 in his first transformation, the Matsyavatara, assumed the form of a fish to warn the 

 wise man Manou of an impending fiood. When the waves had covered the highest 

 mountains, he stayed under the ark, the supreme refuge of humanity and terrestrial 

 species, so as to support it in the fearful tempest until the waters receded. 



Without attaining a very elevated place in the Pantheon of Egyptian gods, Nile 

 fishes ranked high and figured in certain towns among the tutelary divinities. In 

 the Mediterranean, Cretan arti.sts in IfiOO B. C. decorated the Palace of Knossos with 

 a wnndrrfid fresco of dorados and blue dolphins. Creek genius peopled the sea with 



