324 OUT OF DOORS. 



light. It really seems impossible to eat cod fish 

 after seeing the creatures alive. 



As to the whiting, they look almost too beautiful to 

 live, far too beautiful to eat. Their bodies are as if 

 made of mother-of-pearl, over which an opaline lustre is 

 perpetually flitting, and they are so translucent that if 

 another fish passes behind one of them, its presence, 

 though not its outline, can be seen through the 

 whiting's body. There is ample store of mullet, which 

 are particularly valuable inhabitants of an aquarium, 

 because they clear away the vegetation which is always 

 liable to collect on the glass, and to render it so dim 

 that nothing can be seen behind it. Many of the fish 

 have become so familiar that when food is placed on 

 the end of a stick and offered to them they will come 

 and eat it, acting, as a bystander said, 'just like 

 Christians.' Indeed, according to Mr. Lloyd, they are 

 a great deal better than the general run of Christians, 

 since they never quarrel for quarrelling's sake. It is 

 true that if one of them be sick its brethren will eat it, 

 but that is only in accordance with the conservative 

 laws of Nature. Or two gentlemen may quarrel over a 

 lady, and one combatant be killed, in which case he is 

 sure to be eaten ; but that is only the struggle for ex- 

 istence. Or a large hermit crab, which is in a little 

 shell, may eject a little hermit crab who lives in a large 

 shell, and enforces a change of residence ; but that is 

 only carrying out the law of self-preservation. Spite 

 and malice, however, have no place in the dispositions 



