102 DESTEUCTION OF FISH. 



weio-lit of mollusks. The destruction of the whales must have 

 been followed by a proportional increase of the organisms they 

 feed upon, and if we had the means of comparing the statistics of 

 these humble forms of hf e, for even so short a period as that be- 

 tween the years 1760 and 1860, we should find a difference pos- 

 sibly sufficient to suggest an explanation of some phenomena at 

 present unaccounted for. 



For instance, as I have observed in another work,* the phos- 

 phorescence of the sea was unknown to ancient writers, or at least 

 scarcely noticed by them, and even Homer — who, blind as tradi- 

 tion makes him when he composed his epics, had seen, and 

 marked, in earUer life, all that the glorious nature of the Med- 

 iterranean and its coasts discloses to unscientific observation — ^no- 

 where alludes to this most beautiful and striking of maritime won- 

 ders. In the passage just referred to, I have endeavored to ex- 

 plain the silence of ancient writers with respect to this as well as 

 other remarkable phenomena on psychological grounds ; but is it 

 not possible that, in modern times, the animalculse which produce 

 it may have immensely multiphed, from the destruction of their 

 natural enemies by man, and hence that the gleam shot forth by 

 their decomposition, or by their Hving processes, is both more 

 frequent and more brilliant than in the days of classic antiquity ? 



Although the whale does not prey upon smaller creatures re- 

 sembUng himself in form and habits, yet true fishes are extremely 

 voracious, and almost every tribe devours unsparingly the feebler 

 species, and even the spawn and young of its own.f The enor- 

 mous destruction of the shark, :j: the pike, the trout family and 

 other ravenous fi§h, as well as of the fishing-birds, of the seal and 

 the otter, by man, would naturally have occasioned a great in- 



* T7ie Origin and nistory of the English Language, etc., pp. 434, 425. 



f Two young pickerel, Oystes fasciatus, five inches long, ate 128 minnows, 

 an inch long, the first day they were fed, 132 the second, and 150 the third. — 

 Fifth Report of Commissioners of Massachusetts for Introduction of Fish, 1871, 

 p. 17. 



X The shark is pursued in all the tropical and subtropical seas for its fins — 

 for which there is a great demand in China as an article of diet — its oil and 

 other products. About 40,000 are taken annually in the Indian Ocean and the 

 contiguous seas. In the North Sea and the Arctic Ocean large numbers are 

 annually caught. See Merk, Waarenlexikon — a work of great accuracy and 

 value (Leipzig, 1870), article Eaifisch. 



