58 LIFE AND HISTORY OF A SALMON. 



heaving waves of the sea. Of late the popular mind 

 in this country has become much more alive to the 

 charming occupation to be found in the study of natu- 

 ral history. Philosophers proclaim that we cannot 

 know ourselves, and be intelligently aware of our pre- 

 eminence above all earthly creatures, unless we compare 

 their material organisation with our own, and their 

 unreasoning instincts with the capabilities of our higher 

 intelligence. Nor is the public reluctant to listen to 

 such philosophy. Witness the interest taken in the 

 oritological speculations of Professor Owen, when un- 

 folding archetypal forms, and finding the rudimentary 

 idea of our wondrously compacted frame in the back- 

 bone of a primeval fish. Our utilitarian politicians, 

 moreover, by the introduction of natural history into 

 the examination of aspirants to the civil service in 

 India, have at last publicly confessed, that not to be 

 acquainted with the properties of material objects and 

 with the habits of living creatures, is to deprive our- 

 selves of the benefit resulting from that subserviency 

 to our purposes with which they have been created, as 

 well as expose ourselves to the injuries which many 

 of them are capable of inflicting. We cannot afford to 

 be ignorant of the ways and doings of any of God's 

 creatures. They may feed us, clothe us, work for us, 

 but they can also torment, terrify, and kill us ; ravage 

 our choicest substance, and ruin our costliest labours. 

 A tiny insect may blast our fields, or riddle like a sieve 

 the proudest of those floating citadels which guard our 

 sea-girt isle. 



A maritime people is peculiarly interested in the 

 natural history of the ocean and its inhabitants, and of 

 those great rivers and lakes which are the highways of 

 commerce. Dryden insists that for the idea of a ship 

 we are indebted to the form of a fish ; and the sagacious 

 Paley is confident that plate-armour was suggested by 

 the lobster's tail. 



Our interest in fishes is determined by our position. 



