160 THE HATCHING OF FISH. 



and most healthy of the lot. I myself quite agree with 

 this. A number of fish are turned out simultaneously 

 into a pond; some are weak, some are strong; the 

 stronger, of course, gain the mastery over their brethren, 

 and gain all the advantages of the pond, whatever these 

 may happen to be ; the consequence is, that, in pro- 

 portion to their advantages, they become larger than 

 those which have them not. The same thing happens, 

 so to say, in human ponds ; for in large cities we find 

 that the babies and young children who are well fed 

 and live in good air are much stronger and healthier, 

 and, for the most part, larger too, than those born and 

 bred in crowded courts and back passages, and who 

 feed on red herrings and tea rather than on butcher's 

 meat and beer. Take a given number of children from 

 a given large city, say a hundred of the same age, and 

 put them side by side. I doubt not that we should be 

 able to pick out three specimens from among them 

 whose full-length photographs, if grouped together, 

 shall show as much difference as do the drawings of 

 the three fish now before the reader." 



He then relates the result of a dissection by himself 

 next day, which showed that the stomach of the smallest 

 specimen " contained nothing, or positively next to 

 nothing;" and the conclusion arrived at is, that the 

 two larger specimens, whose stomachs were full, were 

 indebted to differences of natural vigour, and also of 

 food, for their remarkable size. 



Now, with all deference to learned zoologists, we 

 cannot accept this as a solution of the phenomenon 

 which all along has puzzled the Stormontfield experi- 

 menters ; and, though we have not had time to com- 

 municate with them, we venture to prognosticate that 

 they are not satisfied with the philosophy of Mr Buck- 

 land, who argues, if we find a specimen of " a little old 

 man," why should we not find " a little old fish ? " We 

 beg pardon for asking, Is not Mr Buckland a little of 

 an odd fish ? He writes as if the common diet of babies 



