THE ANGLER AND HUNTSMAN 61 



flict uncertain up to the last minute, yes, up to the very 

 last second that life existed in the member of the finny 

 tribe. Noted writers have described deep-sea fishing in 

 all its entrancing, exhilarating qualities. Yet the subject 

 has only been lightly touched. Much of mystery and charm 

 remains to be learned of the sea and its denizens. 



It has been proven by a scientist (to whom I am indebt- 

 ed for this data, Prof. J. B. Martens, of St. Mkolas, Bel- 

 gium) that the sea is more densely populated than the land. 

 Think of the herring and codfish, which for centuries have 

 been caught by hundreds of millions without any apparent 

 decrease in their numbers. 



The farther north you go on land the fewer is the 

 number of living beings on land you will find; the faculty 

 of growth seems to diminish, the plants shrink, and gradu- 

 ally animals become scarcer and scarcer. Not so in the 

 sea, which is full of life always and everywhere, and in lat- 

 itudes where the soil, frozen nearly the whole year round, 

 does not yield any harvest to man, he finds ample compen- 

 sation for this in the fisheries, for the water which washes 

 these northern shores contains such an abundance of pro- 

 visions that it can never be exhausted. 



The large carnivorous animals, like the lion, tiger, &c., 

 seldom ever live in herds ; as a general rule only a couple of 

 them occupy the same given extent of territory. But in the 

 sea we find still greater carnivorous animals than the lion 

 and the tiger; among these are the various kinds of dolphins, 

 which, from a scientific point of view, must be classed with 

 the whales, because they also have lungs, and come to the 

 surface to breathe. Altho' not as large as the whale, the 

 dolphin must nevertheless be classed among the larger sea 

 animals, for its length varies from eight to twenty and even 

 as higih as forty feet. In olden times this animal was con- 

 sidered a friend to man, it even being said that the dolphins 

 could show affection, but to tell the truth, its only love is 

 for prey, and the dolphins are really nothing less than bar- 



