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CHAPTER II. 



FISHES IN ZOOLOGICAL MYTHOLOGY. 



What Pantagruel saw in Lantern-land — The Greek Naturalists — The 

 dignity of the Fish Myth, and of Zoological Mythology in 

 general — Fish in the Solar Myth — Fish-version of Reineke 

 Fuchs— Vishnu's Fish-Avatar— The Phallical Fish— The Philan- 

 thropic Dolphin, a Hellenic creation— The Cosmopolitan Turtle 

 Myth — Purely fanciful Fishes — The Stay-ship and others — Sea 

 Monsters, their persistence in popular belief — Lawrens Andrewe, 

 "hys Fisshes." 



When Pantagruel was on his travels, he came, he tells us, 

 " into the country of Tapestry, and saw the Mediterranean 

 Sea open to the right and left down to the very bottom : 

 just as the Red Sea very fairly left its bed at the Arabian 

 gulf, to make a lane for the Jews, when they left Egypt. 

 There I found Triton winding his silver shell instead of a 

 horn, and also Glaucus, Proteus, Nereus, and a thousand 

 other godlings and sea monsters. I also saw an infinite 

 number of fish of all kinds, dancing, flying, vaulting, fight- 

 ing, eating, breathing, hitting, shoving, spawning, fishing, 

 skirmishing, lying in ambuscade, making truces, cheapening, 

 bargaining, swearing, and sporting. In a blind corner I saw 

 Aristotle holding a lantern, in the posture in which the 

 hermit uses to be drawn near St. Christopher, watching, 

 prying, thinking, and setting everything down in writing." 



But if Aristotle had not taken his lantern into the 

 depths of nature, the world for some centuries would have 

 been more ignorant and superstitious than it was, and we 



