4 1 6 Notes on Sport a fid Travel v 



Auckland a descendant of the Mutineers of the 

 Bounty (a delightful people, but doomed by the 

 natural law against the intermarriage of distinct 

 races), who told me that mother, father, and baby, 

 had all been successfully harpooned on the afternoon 

 of the day we left, and the pleasant little family 

 party had been resolved into so many gallons of 

 train-oil, to his no small personal emolument. I 

 wonder what became of the trifold affection existing 

 between the three when I saw them last ? Was 

 that eternally boiled down with the blubber ? But 

 it is of no more use philosophising on that subject 

 than on any other without facts to go upon. Still 

 it seemed to me almost a pity, but then I do not 

 deal in, or particularly like, train-oil. Do you 

 remember that quaint whimsy of Tom Hood the 

 father ? ' Viator. It is curious to consider the 

 family of whales, growing thinner according to the 

 propagation of parish lamps. Piscator. Aye, and 

 withal, how the race of man, who is a terrestrial 

 animal, should have been in the greatest jeopardy of 

 extinction by the element of water ; whereas the 

 whales living in the ocean are most liable to be 

 burnt out.' Verily, as Viator replies, 'it is a plea- 

 sant speculation,' as indeed are all those in that 

 marvellously profound triviality the Walton Re- 

 divivus. 



I think that I have clearly recognised the exist- 

 ence of another act in this little domestic drama, one 

 which I ought most probably to have introduced 



