FALLACIES AND FACTS, 199 



me to command, I made the suggestion that, by 

 way of completing the design, they should put up 

 a hand-board on the bank of the ladder, with 

 directions for the fish— '^ The Way In," ^^ The 

 Way Out " ; and then nothing more would be 

 needed but an amphibious schoolmaster to put 

 himself into correspondence with Neptune, and to 

 establish a scaly school beneath the waves, to teach 

 a new mode of ascent to the higher or descend- 

 ing waters, the object of the school not being more 

 vague in some respects than the earth-born schools 

 of the upper world now so mischievously fashionable. 



All wild things — fish, birds, and beasts — are, to 

 an immense extent, governed by the instincts given 

 them by Nature ; and if it is the desire of man to 

 lead, to interest, or to tame those creatures, and to 

 induce their timid instincts to lay aside the terror 

 inculcated by man's appearance and by his acts, 

 man must court them through the means to which 

 Nature allows him to attain ; there is no other way 

 of compassing the object save by the delicate road 

 suggested. 



Hearsay will not teach method ; for the informant 

 is prone to exaggeration, particularly when, with a 

 vulgar mind, he sees that exaggeration undetected 



