BOOK OF NATURE LAID OPEN, 145 



If the attributes of the Deity are so conspicuously 

 displayed in the general structure and conformation 

 of fishes, they are no less so in the infinity of their 

 number and sizes; in the provision made for at once 

 keeping up the number of this most numerous of all 

 classes, and preventing the sea from being overstock- 

 ed ; and in that peculiarity of form and structure, so 

 essentially necessary in the different species. 



In this mighty reservoir it may emphatically, inr 

 deed, be said, " there are creatures innumerable, 

 both small and great." Linnaeus, however, reckons 

 upwards of four hundred species ; but it is extremely 

 probable, that numbers are concealed in the vast ex- 

 tent and profundity of the ocean, which have never 

 yet been exposed to human observation. But who 

 can count the numbers in each species ? For who 

 can attempt to calculate the numbers in those pro- 

 digious shoals that tinge the sea with their colour, 

 without taking into consideration " those scaly herds, 

 and that minuter fry, which grace the sea weed, or 

 stray through the coral grove?" and what a diversity 

 and variety of sizes do they assume, from the massy 

 whale that sports at large in the Greenland seas, to 

 those minute creatures which enter our creeks, and 

 take up their abode in our harbours! 



Yet, notwithstanding the prodigious numbers of 

 some of these animals, and the stupendous size of 

 others, as we observed before, they are all conve- 

 niently lodged and fed ; which is the more surprising, 

 if we take into consideration the amazing fecundity 

 of some, and the longevity of others of these erea- 



o 



