NONSUCH 



Except for minor details my description will 

 cover the general appearance of all Silversides in 

 the world. Wherever they live, they are found in 

 shallow water and in great schools. Now human 

 beings, being complex beyond all necessity, have 

 scores of reasons for collecting in schools — our 

 word school is only one of the many — we call 

 them audiences, clubs, congregations, passengers, 

 tourists, armies and mobs — associated for educa- 

 tion, society, religion, transportation, defense and 

 discontent or anger. Fish, being so busy living their 

 life to the full, have less time to worry about casual 

 things, and have no trenches or cyclone cellars, nor 

 does the future interest them, so they have no meet- 

 ing houses or churches, and no fish ever joined 

 another fish because of anger ; mobs are the preroga- 

 tive of human beings. 



One way of finding out about anything is to 

 discover when it does not exist; in Bermuda there 

 are three things which preclude schooling of the 

 Silversides — extreme youth, night and the mack- 

 erel season. The primary object of schooling is 

 probably rather a primitive one. It is true through- 

 out the animal kingdom that the creatures which 

 live in herds or flocks are usually inferior in intel- 

 lect. Wasps and bees are clever insects but the soli- 

 tary wasps are geniuses in comparison. In an 

 aquarium the gregarious fishes are deadly dull, 

 eternally milling about in circles, whereas those liv- 

 ing solitarily or in pairs well repay watching, es- 

 pecially in their native haunts. 



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