64 THE ANGLER AND HUNTSMAN 



erness?" These are some of the questions the observant 

 person will ask, and these questions are very readily an- 

 swered. 



In the first place, those animals which are intended 

 to serve as a prey to others are endowed with greater fe- 

 cundity; they produce more young ones than those ani- 

 mals wiiich live on them ; nature has provided this balance ; 

 so the carnivorous animals are therefore never in want of 

 food, which consists of weaker animals, and still the races 

 of the latter do not die out. 



It will readily be seen how life in the water does not 

 become extinct, in spite of all the scenes of murderous car- 

 nage which are enacted, if we remember that, as a general 

 rule, the water animals increase much more than land ani- 

 mals. There are animals destroyed in innumerable quan- 

 tities, both by their natural enemies and by man. Such 

 are the herring and the codfish whose numbers do not 

 seem to have materially decreased in the course of centu- 

 ries. This will easily be understood when we state that a 

 single herring produces 60,000 eggs, while the codfish ma- 

 tures as many as 2,000,000. It must also be remembered 

 that the young fry hatched from these eggs grows up with- 

 out any great difficulty. Young fish know how to care 

 for themselves the moment they emerge from the egg, and 

 father and mother need not look after them. The work of 

 the codfish would be overwhelming if, like the birds, it 

 had to feed its innumerable young. 



The sea is not only rich in fish, but also in other ani- 

 mals. In its depths live all sorts of strange and unre- 

 corded monsters. Science has barely touched the subject. 

 Many revelations remain to be unfolded by future genera- 

 tions. 



Only recently scientists were confronted with a baf- 

 fling specimen of the deep, caught by Captain Charles H. 

 Thompson off the Florida Keys. Leading scientists say 

 it is the world's largest fish, yet some say it is only a mere 

 baby of its tribe. 



