COD AND VIPER. 55 



but they only came up to these things and then refused 

 them. Suddenly I recollected that I had a dead viper 

 in my pocket, which I had picked up that morning in 

 the middle of the carriage road, with his back broken 

 by a wheel. I took the viper out of my pocket and 

 waved it about with a snake-like motion in the water. 

 To my great astonishment, the cod all swam away from 

 it ! I even tried the hungry little cod, who had been 

 jostled out of the *' soup kitchen " by the bigger fish ; 

 but no ! even they turned up their tails at the viper. I 

 tried them two or three times ; always with the same 

 result. At last one big fellow came up from the bottom 

 like a rocket and swallowed at a gulp about half of the 

 viper. I pulled at the viper's tail and the cod pulled 

 at his head ; he was a tough viper or he would have 

 come in two. At last the cod let go, as though he had 

 found out that this was not his proper food. I confess 

 I am unable to explain how it was that all the cod 

 except this one swam away from the viper. Have cod, 

 like New Zealauders, a horror of snakes ? 



I look upon a salmon as a highly intellectual animal 

 — an aristocrat and a gentleman. The cod-fish is a 

 common, vulgar creature, with a big mouth and rush- 

 ing manners. When caught in the crowd in the Lord 

 Mayor's show, I saw one of these London wide-mouthed, 

 lead-r-n-eyed blackguards, as like a cod-fish as a man 

 can be like a fish. But yet I must not abuse the poor 

 cod. They certainly have, when alive, an ex]3ression of 

 their own, possibly also a language. Would that I knew 

 how to speak it ! 



There seems also to be among fish, as among men, 

 what the people in Lidia call " caste ; " that is to say, a 

 meeting of class A with class Z strikes a note of discord, 

 which no amount of the so much vaunted education of 



