236 ISLES OF SUMMER. 



placed in the wide domain of fact. While Victor Hugo's " devil 

 fish," closely resembles, in many particulars; the gigantic cuttle 

 fish, yet, to some extent, it is a creature which the imagination 

 has constructed upon a substantial basis of fact. A scientific 

 gentleman, learned in all the i^iscatory learning of the present 

 day, stated in our presence before the Connecticut Academy of 

 Arts and Sciences, that he had no doubt of the existence of the 

 sea serpent, and that before many years it will be captured and 

 critically examined by scientific exjDcrts. There is something 

 truly grand in the movements of the monsters of the deep 

 througli tlie vast depths and immense spaces of the great world 

 of waters. But it is apparent that while some fish are able to 

 wander at will in various directions around the world, others are 

 localized by their necessities, and complete their little circle of 

 life very near their family spawning ground. Hence the water 

 that surrounds the Isles of Summer, and that covers the Banks 

 out of which they rise, has its own peculiar and wonderful fauna, 

 some glimpses of which were revealed to us while we were look- 

 ing through the water glasses at the corals, and th-^ curious and 

 wonderful forms of life which surround and adorn them. 



Many of these fish Mr. Phelps secured and preserved, and 

 having carefully and critically examined them at his home in 

 Vermont, and closely studied them both in and out of the water 

 daring his five montlis stay in Nassau, he has furnished us de- 

 tailed descriptions of some of them, which we have utilized. We 

 have edited his notes, and shaped them somewhat to fill the 

 limited space that we have been able to spare for them in a vol- 

 ume which treats of so many other subjects. We did not our- 

 selves make the fish a special object of study. We have retained, 

 as far as possible, the language of Mr. Phelps, and to him and 

 Mr. Catesby should be given credit for whatever of merit there 

 may be in nearly all our piscatory pen pictures. 



