GULF STREAM^ CLIMATES, AND C03DIERCE. 59 



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 

 temperature of the water ; and whether these cold and warm 

 currents of the ocean do not constitute the great highwa3's 

 through which migratory fishes travel from one region to another. 

 Vsliy should not fish be as much the creatures of climate as 

 plants, or as birds and other animals of land, sea, and air ? 

 Indeed, we know that some kinds of fish arc found onh^ in 

 certain climates. In other words, they live w^here the tempera- 

 ture of the water ranges between certain degrees. 



159. A shoal of sea-nettles. — Navigators have often met with 

 vast numbers of young sea-nettles (medusce) drifting along with 

 the Gulf Stream. They are known to constitute the principal 

 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 wai-m waters of this stream. 

 An intelligent sea-captain informs me that, several years ago, in 

 the Gulf Stream ofi" 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 inspection in the water, to acorns 

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

 cover the sea, giving it the apj)earance, in the distance, of a 

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

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

 sixty days afterwards, on his return, he fell in with the same 

 school off the Western Islands, and here he was three or four 

 days in passing them again. He recognized them as the same, 

 for he had never before seen any like them ; and on both occa- 

 sions he frequently hauled up buckets full and examined them. 



160. Food for ivhales. — Now the Western Islands is the great 

 place of resort for whales ; and at first there is something curious 

 to us in the idea that the Gulf of Mexico is the harvest field, and 

 the Gulf Stream the gleaner which collects the fruitage planted 

 there, and conveys it thousands of miles off to the hungry whale 

 at sea. But how perfectly in unison is it with the kind and pro- 

 vidential care of that great and good Being that caters for the 

 sparrow, and feeds the young ravens when they cry ! 



161. Piazzi Sinijth's description. — Piazzi Smyth, the Astronomer 

 Eoyal of Edinburgh, when bound to Teneriffe on his celebrated 

 astronomical expedition of 1856, fell in with the annual harvest 



