A MOTHERLY KNIGHT IN ARMOR 



credulity of our ancestors let us stop a moment and 

 recite the phrase: " Remember Tennessee! " It is a 

 mortifying but healthful exercise. To appreciate a 

 seahorse to the full we must make ourselves believe 

 that we are the first to discover it ; the initial playing 

 of the Rosary, or September Morn fresh from the 

 artist's brush, and all that sort of thing. 



We require a seahorse, so from Nonsuch we send 

 out a motor boat and pull a small dredge slowly 

 through some of the growth of eel-grass in Castle 

 Harbor. One, two, three or no seahorses may result, 

 but usually we find at least one of the curious little 

 beings lying quietly in the mass of trigger-fish, 

 shells, grass, seaweed and mud. He is as helpless 

 as a prostrate knight in armor. I lift him and gently 

 wash the mud out of his fin — mane, I was going to 

 say — and then I let him slide down the submerged 

 ways of my fingers and he is launched in a fresh 

 aquarium. He rights himself — not like other fish, 

 but vertically ; turns his head from left to right, and 

 glides slowly away. He seems to have no visible 

 power of propulsion, but it is the invisibility of an 

 airplane propellor — the fin on the back has become 

 a dim, thin haze, its endless rippling web pushing 

 back against the resisting water. The aquarium is a 

 narrow rectangle and the seahorse traverses one 

 long side, then a short end, and rests. And this first 

 journey drives home a simile which needed just 

 such an impetus; much more than the head of a 

 horse, our Hippocampus resembles the knight of 

 the chess-board, and his first move in the aquarium 



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