158 FISH. 



ring so fastened to a pike, with the date, 1487, and the king's 

 order, appended, and the fish thrown into his pond, near 

 his castle of Kaiserslautern. The pike was taken in 1754, 

 when it had consequently attained the age of two hundred 

 and sixty-seven years. It weighed three hundred and fifty 

 pounds, and was nineteen feet long. 



The senses of smell and hearing have no external avenue 

 in fishes, but the former is said to be the most acute of all 

 their senses. In their natural element their motions exceed 

 in swiftness and duration the flight of birds, the shark being 

 swifter and more untiring than the eagle, and the herring 

 and salmon more rapid than the swallow. Generally the 

 eye of the ffsh is unprotected with eyelids, being made to 

 resist the water, as the terrestrial animal is to live in air. 



I shall proceed to give a short account of some of the most 

 important edible fish. By a benevolent Providence those 

 classes which constitute the most wholesome xfood for man 

 are the most numerous. 



The Herring lives in the Arctic seas of Europe, Asia, 

 and America, migrating southward, at different seasons of 

 the year, in vast shoals, to obtain food and deposit their 

 spawn. These shoals, which are led by the largest and 

 strongest, and divided into bands as they proceed, which visit 

 different islands and countries, are followed by larger fish, 

 which devour them, and by flocks of gulls and marine birds, 

 whose noise and numbers announce the approach of the fish. 

 These migrations are said to take place at three different 

 times. The first, when the ice begins to melt, to the end of 

 June ; then comes the summer migration ; the autumn one fol- 

 lows, lasting till the midst of September. They deposit their 

 spawn where stones and marine plants are found. The 

 millions of these fish that are annually taken by English, 

 Dutch, and American seamen, by the Norwegians and other 

 European nations, are hardly to be computed. Against 



