260 FISHES. 



the latter in the number and variety of living' creatures which inhabits 

 its depths. On the land, the matter susceptible of life, is, for the most 

 part, appropriated to the formation and support of vegetable species ; 

 the herbiverous animals are sustained iipon these species, which, 

 becoming anamalized by this process, constitute the proper food of 

 the carniverous animals, these latter, however, composing scarcely 

 more than half the terrestial classes of living beings. But in the 

 waters, and in an especial manner, in the ocean, where the vegetable 

 kingdom is infinitely more circumscribed, every thing teems with 

 life or is ready for that condition : here the animals sustain existence 

 only at the expense of each other, or by feeding on the mucous and 

 other remains of animal Ijodies : here too may be contemplated the 

 extremes of greatness and littleness, from the millions of monads and 

 other species which might have been eternally invisible to us Avithout 

 that marvellous auxiliary, the microscope, up to those cachalots, and 

 other whales which exceed twenty times the size of the largest ter- 

 restial quadrupeds. Here, likewise, is it that we come to regard the 

 grandest scale in nature of those organic combinations on which natu- 

 ralists bestow the title of '-classes," and of which we may Avell say, 

 that they all constitute so many representatives, just as among the 

 birds, creatures essentially aerial, we find several, as the Penguins, 

 for example, whose structure keeps them nearly all their lives attached 

 to the ocean tribes. 



The class Mammalia numbers amongst its members in the waters 

 not only the Seals, the Morses, and the Sea Cows, Avhich cannot live 

 long out of it, but also the whole of the Whales Avhich cannot live out 

 of it at all: whilst, at the same time, the nature of their respiratory 

 function obliges them to come to the surface of the water. In the 

 sea, again, we find representatives, on the part of the reptiles, in 

 Tortoises, Crocodiles, Serpents, and especially in the Batrachian or 

 Frog tribes. Numerous insects are aquatic, even in their perfect 

 state ; and the very considerable proportion of this class which ascends 

 in the atmosphere to produce their yoimg and then to die there, have 

 previously existed in the Avaters, either in the larva or the nympha state, 

 during a large portion of their life. It is in the waters that we must 

 expect to find almost the whole of the Mollusca, the Annelides, the 

 Crustacea, and the Zoophytes — four classes which contribiite to the land 

 only some isolated and erratic members. Thus the ancients used to 

 say that every thing that existed any where else was found in the sea, 

 whilst many things were in the sea which could not be discovered in 

 any other place. Quicquid nascatur in parte natures xilla et in mart esse ; 

 pra'terque midta qiue nvsqtiam alibi*. 



But of all the coimtless multitudes of creatures which populate and 

 give life to the liquid element — none so abound — none are so ex- 

 clusively peculiar — none so remarkal)le for their number, their varied 

 forms, their beautifid colours, and, above all, the infinite benefits 

 which man derives from them — as those which belong to the class of 

 Fishes. This paramount importance of the fishes is such as to have 

 led to the extension of the application of their name to every form of 



« Pliny, b. LX. c. II.; 



