III. 



It certainly seems strange that man, who has done so 

 many wonderful things, who has, so to speak, scaled 

 the heavens, to learn the movements of suns and planets, 

 who has plunged deep into the earth for mineral trea- 

 sures, who has turned many a mournful morass, and 

 dreary forest, and barren waste, into fruitful corn-fields 

 or abundant pasturages, who has made the tremendous 

 agent, electricity itself, docile to his will, it is strange 

 that he, with his vast ingenuity, should never have be- 

 thought him of taking measures for preserving the eggs 

 of fish, and thereby secure to himself, in all climates and 

 at all seasons, an abundant supply of wholesome food. 



Still stranger perhaps is it to find, that though he has 

 taken immense pains to discover the secrets of nature, 

 even in matters of mere scientific, or, if we may so say, 

 idle curiosity, centuries passed away before it occurred 

 to him that he might do with fish what he has done for 

 animals, and birds, and plants, assist and control, and 

 improve, the operations of nature ; that is to say, that, 

 instead of leaving the female to deposit her eggs and the 

 male his milt, and then abandon them, he might cause 

 the female to discharge her burden, and the male his 

 fecundating liquor, where he pleased; that he might 

 assist them in the operation ; and that for so doing he 

 might obtain a living fish from almost every egg. 



But the strangest thing of all undoubtedly is, that 

 when he did learn that he could produce fish as well as 

 the fish themselves when scientific naturalists discovered 

 that by casting some of the male's milt on the female's 

 eggs fish would be brought forth, as surely as if the 

 operation had been done by the parents in the bed of a 



