ABUNDANCE OF THE SEA. 207 
It does not fly very high, but swings itself as far as a musket- 
ball reaches, and may thus elude even the rapidity of the 
dolphin. That strangely formed fish, the Pegasus of the Indian 
seas, is also enabled by its large pec- 
toral fins to support itself for some 
moments in the air, when it springs 
over the surface of the water. 
Neither the quadrupeds nor the 
birds are subject to so many persecu- 
tions as the fishes, which have inex- 
orable enemies in all classes of animals. Swimming Pegasus. 
Numberless molluscs and zoophytes 
feed upon their eggs, or devour their minute fry; myriads of sea- 
birds are on the look-out for them along the strands, or on the 
high ocean ; seals and ice-bears lie in wait for them, while with 
weapons and deceit, with net, angle and harpoon, man carries 
death and destruction into their ranks. It would be a difficult 
task to state with any degree of exactness the number of fisher- 
men disseminated over the face of the globe, but if we consider 
that, on a moderate calculation, at least a million of persons are 
directly or indirectly engaged in fishing in Great Britain and 
Ireland alone, and then cast a glance over the immense coast- 
line of the ocean, we may without exaggeration affirm that at 
least one-fiftieth part of the human race lives upon the produce 
of the seas. If we further reflect that fishes form a great part 
of the food of all coast-inhabitants, and consider in what masses 
they are sent into the interior,— fresh, dried, salted, smoked, 
and pickled,—we cannot doubt that the great extent of the ocean 
only apparently limits the numbers of the human race, for how 
many thousands of square miles of the most fruitful soil would 
it not require to bring forth the quantity of food which the blue 
and green fields of ocean supply to man? “ Bounteous mother,” 
“ Alma parens,” was the name given by the grateful ancients to 
the corn and grass-producing, herd-feeding earth; but how 
much more deserving of that endearing appellation is the sea, 
that, without being ploughed or manured, dispenses her gifts 
with such inexhaustible profusion! Numberless indeed are the 
various kinds of fishes which she furnishes to man, for almost 
every species affords an equally agreeable and healthy food: but 
of all the finny families or tribes that people the ocean none can 
