14 FISHES OF FANCY. 



owe to him and to Strabo and Oppian, ^lian and Pliny — 

 those brave old thinkers who, in spite of the shoals of error 

 and the fogs of myth, tried their hardest to keep the ship's 

 head straight for the glimmering beacon-light of Truth — 

 more than we can ever repay. For though the world has 

 grown beyond their facts, and modern science has sifted 

 their knowledge through and through — indeed, I should 

 like to see a fine imposed upon those writers who still 

 persist in larding their lean pages with quotations from 

 them, and imprisonment without the option of a fine 

 upon all who call Pliny " quaint " — yet their works, the 

 Pyramids of old-world thought, abound in significances 

 that can never lose their interest. Zoological mythology 

 is no whimsical study. It reaches out with arms of 

 astronomical power to the beginnings of time, demonstrates 

 the continuity of human intelligence, and proves the evo- 

 lution of modern creeds. 



And since in the beginning there were only Light and 

 Water, the eldest of zoological myths is the Fish-myth. 

 Asia believes the earth to have been saved by a fish 

 and to be supported on a tortoise ; Polynesia, that it was 

 brought up, a fish itself, on a fish-hook, out of the primaeval 

 ocean ; America, that a turtle, the sole tenant of the waste 

 of waters, dived for it into the depths of diluvian chaos. 

 Among the most ancient of Syrian divinities is the fish- 

 form ; it is found among the remoter antiquities of Egypt ; 

 primitive Europe saw gods in its fish. Thus gradually, 

 down through the ages, the same symbol was passed on 

 from nation to nation, and the sea, from its mystery, its 

 acknowledged seniority, claimed conspicuous honours in 

 each Pantheon, until, reaching historic times, we find the 

 Greeks — borrowing they knew not whence — perpetuating 

 the original myth, and adding to it as only the subtle 



