VALUE OF NORWEGIAN LAKES FOR FISH CULTURE. 541 



merit in other respects, have attempted to put forward contrary to what 

 experience has established. 



When the existing continents rose up from the seas in which they 

 were born, the greatest ]>ortion of the sokible substances which could 

 serve for the support of living beings collected with the water in the sea. 

 After this time thousands, perhaps myriads, of cycles elapsed, and the 

 land without cessation was washed away by rain. That is to say, dis- 

 tilled water has not ceased to furnish this immense reservoir wiih ma- 

 terials of the same nature, with organic detritus. 



Hereby it becomes explicable how the river water flowing over a great 

 exi)anse becomes enriched, how the sea water becomes a nourishing 

 bath for the beings which it contains. In this manner is explained 

 the abundance of the products of all kinds which the waters possess, 

 and whose existence seems a paradox ; plants without roots nourish 

 themselves solely through their branches or leaves ; stationary animals 

 wait for the occurrence of their food, which is never wanting : free-mov- 

 ing animals, which float almost passively, a ball for the wind and waves, 

 which scatter them everywhere, And everywhere that which is required 

 for their nourishment. 



But, on the other hand, it holds good in the ocean, also, that where no 

 washing off of the solid land can reach, there also life ceases and death 

 reigns. The fluid plain has its deserts just as the dry land. 



Such an one is an enormous area in the southern part of the Pacific 

 Ocean, separated by Humboldt's Stream from the coast of South 

 America, which has been rightly called the Desert Sea. Here the waves 

 rise and fall without moving anything but water ; the billow is never 

 traversed by any fish, nor the air by the pinions of any bird. That the 

 sea, at a certain distance from the coast where the organized matter 

 washed down from the dry land sinks to the bottom or is consumed by 

 the multitude of living beings, does not everywhere show this unusual 

 barrenness, which has so greatly astonished the seafaring ones who 

 crossed this region, is so because, by the universal laws which govern 

 our planet, there goes on an incessant mixmg of all its parts. Even the 

 revolution of the land produces streams which flow from the equator to 

 the poles and from the poles to the equator, and which carry the waters 

 which have washed the Old World over to the new continent, and the 

 waves which have washed America's coasts back again to Europe. 

 These streams carry, just as our great rivers, with which we have long 

 compared them, elements of all kinds, which are plundered from the dry 

 land ; furrowing, in a manner, the ocean in all directions, they distrib- 

 ute, wherever they extend, fertility and life. 



As the soil is not fruitful unless it is regularly watered, so also is the 

 water fruitful only by virtue of the elements which it receives and trans- 

 forms from the mainland. The sea sends the mainland rain and dew 

 which are indispensable, to it ; the mainland sends the sea the nour- 

 ishing materials which it needs. Each of them expects a return for 



