FISHES. 379 



CLASS IV.-FISHES. 



"ALL life is from the sea, none from the continent. All 

 mucus is endowed with life. The whole sea is alive. It is 

 a fluctuating, ever self-elevating and ever self-depressing or- 

 ganism. Where the sea-organism by self-elevation succeeds 

 in attaining unto form, there issues forth from it a higher 

 organism. Love arose out of the sea-foam. The first or- 

 ganic forms, whether plants or animals, emerged from the 

 shallow parts of the sea. The first men were the literal and 

 mountainous inhabitants of warmer countries, and found, 

 therefore, at once reptiles, fishes, fruit, and game for 

 food. " PhysiopMlosopliy. 



The ripple-marked sand-rock of the mountain's brow, a 

 miniature sea embossed in original stucco, a miraculous me- 

 dallion of a most antique regime, the agitated waters chiseled 

 in stone by the artistic sculptor of the globe, now high in the 

 air, " plays glad with the breezes as once with the waves : " " old 

 play -fellows meet." So the cloud stoops and nods to his 

 brother, has the Old friend the ocean along with him, and can- 

 not be severed, must meet in the great waltz again, "by one 

 music enchanted ;" thus by ancient affinity they approach : 

 down comes the rain, and the sand and the wave meet. 

 Strange ! but here is the sea, and here is its ever-accompany- 

 ing life, for all "life is from the sea." 



Under the shadow of that rock, poised in the crystal me- 

 dium that has just sprung from its heart, hangs the moun- 

 tain trout, true brother of the illustrious sailor of the seas, 

 the navigator of the ocean, the grand salmon, (Salmo salar,) 

 whose armies, by a wondrous instinct, as true as the needle 

 to the pole, traversed weary wastes of water, silent, sure, 

 and steadfast as the planets in their starry spaces. " Born in 



