U2 THE BOTTOM OF THE HEA. 



(burteeii small fry about an incli long, and it seemed 

 to be very comfortable after its sumptuous repast. 

 It would not suffer any other fish in the same vessel, 

 and attacked any that might be put in, even though 

 they were ten times its own size. One day M. 

 Arderon put a small fish in ; the stickleback imme- 

 diately gave it chase, bit a morsel out of its tail, and if 

 it had not been taken from the vessel, it would most 

 certainly have killed it. 



3. Terrible Conflicts of Marine Monsters — Massacre of the Weak 

 by the Strong. 



Life is sustained by deatli ; we are constant wit- 

 nesses to the truth of this adage. It would seem as 

 if a given quantity of life had been conferred on the 

 globe, and that it neither augments nor diminishes, 

 but that it is incessantly transformed and renewed — 

 in a word, that all death reproduces an equivalent 

 quantity of life.* 



Although it is true that man has sustained the 

 most deadly struggles against monsters since the 

 earliest ages, the memory of which is perpetuated in 

 legends and fables, he has in later times extended 



* Quantity cannot be piedicatod of life. M. Sonrel occasionally 

 philosophises in tliis vein, and we have generally allowed him {/> 

 have his own way. If the reader cares for another opinion, ours is 

 that this is not the languiige a jjliilosophor ought to use. — Tr. 



