56 PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY OF THE SEA, AND ITS METEOROLOGY. 



Stream, tliougli but a few miles distant, their flesli is soft and unfit 

 for the table. The temperatm-e of the water at the Balize reaches 

 90°. The fish taken there are not to be comj^ared with those of 

 the same latitude in this cold stream. New Orleans, therefore, 

 resorts to the cool waters on the Florida coasts for her choicest fish. 

 The same is the case in the Pacific. A cmTent of cold water 

 (§ 398) from the south swee2:)S the shores of Chili, Peru, and 

 Columbia, and reaches the Gallipagos Islands imder the equator. 

 Throughout this whole distance, the world does not afibrd a more 

 abundant or excellent supply of fish. Yet out m the Pacific, at the 

 Society Islands, where coral abounds, and the water preserves a 

 higher temperatm^e, the fish, though they vie in gorgeousness of 

 coloming with the birds, and plants, and insects of the tropics, are 

 held in no esteem as an article of food. I have kno^^Ti sailors, even 

 after long voyages, still to prefer their salt beef and pork to a mess 

 of fish taken there. The few facts which we have bearing upon 

 this subject seem to suggest it as a point of the inquiry to be made, 

 whether the habitat of certain fish does not indicate the tempera- 

 tm-e of the water ; and whether these cold and warm cm-rents of 

 the ocean do not constitute the gi^eat highways through which 

 migratory fishes travel fi'om one region to another. AYhy should 

 not fish be as much the creatm'es of climate as plants, or as birds 

 and other animals of land, sea, and ah' ? Indeed, we know that 

 some kinds of fish are found only in certain climates. In other 

 words, they hve where the temperature of the water ranges be- 

 tween certain degrees. 



159. Navigators have often met with vast numbers of young 

 A shoal of sea-net- soa-nettles {medusie) drifting along mth the Gull" 

 "®^- Stream. They are kno"\ATi to constitute the princi- 



pal food for the whale ; but whither bound by this route has 

 caused much curious speculation, for it is well known that the 

 habits of the right whale are averse to the warm waters of this 

 stream. An intelligent sea-captain informs me that, several years 

 ago, in the Gulf Stream off the coast of Florida, he fell in with 

 such a " school of young sea-nettles as had never before been heard 

 of." The sea was covered with them for many leagues. He 

 likened them, as they appeared on near insj^ection in the water, to 

 acorns floating on a stream ; but they were so thick as completely 

 to cover the sea, giving it the appearance, in the distance, of 

 a boundless meadow in the yellow leaf. He was boimd to Eng- 

 land, and was five or six days in sailing through them. In 



