110 BOOK OF NATURE LAID OPEK 



CHAP. XIII. 



FISHES. 



" Who can old Ocean's pathless bed explore, 

 And count her tribes that people every shore: 1 " 



" From icy oceans, where the whales 

 Toss in foam their lashing tails." 



IP the Ostrich, the Emu, and the Cassowary, were 

 remarkable for their size, and claimed our first at- 

 tention among the feathery tribes, in consequence of 

 their apparently constituting part of that link which 

 unites the quadruped to the volatile race, the Whale 

 deserves our immediate notice on entering among 

 the finny tribes; not only on account of its enormous 

 bulk, which has occasioned it, in its movements, to 

 be compared to a mountain in motion, but for the 

 resemblance that it bears to the four footed class of 

 animals in its internal structure, and that superior in- 

 stinctive sagacity which it displays in its conjugal at- 

 tachment, and care of its offspring* In bulk, the 

 Whale may be said to exceed every animal of which 

 we have any certain description. They are in the 

 arctic regions at present from sixty to ninety feet 

 long; but formerly, when the captures were lessfre- 

 qnent, and they were not so much thinned before ar- 

 riving at a larger growth, they were suid to be found 

 of the enormous length of two hundred and fifty feet; 

 and in the Indian Seas they aiv still seen one hun- 

 dred and fifty feet in length. Yet, notwithstanding 



