242 THE INHABITANTS OF THE SEA. 
hundreds of thousands, they could not possibly maintain them- 
selves against the vast number of their enemies. ‘ Not one egg 
too much,” every one will say who considers that of all the 
myriads of germs which are deposited on the shallow sand- 
banks and shores to be quickened by the fructifying warmth 
of the sun, not one in a hundred comes to life, as fishes and 
molluscs, crabs and radiata, devour the spawn with equal yoracity; 
that a thousand dangers await the young defenceless fry, since 
everywhere in the oceanic realms no other right is known than 
that of the stronger; and that, finally, the insatiable rapacity of 
man is continually extirpating millions on millions of the full- 
grown fishes. But if very few of this much-persecuted race 
die a natural death, a life of liberty makes them some amends 
for their violent end. The tortured cart-horse or the imprisoned 
nightingale would, if they could reflect, willingly exchange their 
hard lot and joyless existence for the free life of the independent 
fish, who, from the greater simplicity of his structure, his want 
of higher sensibilities, his excellent digestion, and the more 
equal temperature of the element in which he lives, remains 
unmolested by many of the diseases to which the warm-blooded 
and particularly the domestic animals are subject. 
