150 BOOK OP NATURE LAID OPE*. 



is experienced from electricity. The Cuttle-fish is 

 furnished with a liquid magazine of an inky colour, 

 to darken the waters when pursued by an enemy. 

 The Galley-fish is protected by the caustic quality 

 of the substance with which its legs are smeared. 

 The abhorrent appearance of the Sea Orb is suffi- 

 cient to disgust men from handling it, and more so 

 fco deter them from partaking of its poisonous quality 

 by way of food. And it is not improbable but the 

 hideous form of the Sea-devil, and other monsters of 

 the deep, may have been stamped upon them by na- 

 rore (which does nothing in vain,) for similar purposes. 



The Instincts of Fishes. 



Fishes, it is said, appear inferior to beasts and birds 

 In acuteness of sensation and instinctive sagacity ; but 

 how is this reconcileable with that tenderness, care, 

 and solicitude, (which nothing can exceed,) which 

 the common Whale evinces for her young ? She- 

 suckles and nurses them with the greatest affection, 

 takes them with her wherever she goes ; when pur- 

 sued she carries them on her back, and supports them 

 with her fins ; when wounded she will not relinquish 

 her charge, and when obliged to plunge, in midst 

 of her agonies, will clasp them more closely, and sink 

 with them to the bottom. Mr Waller, in his beau- 

 tiful poem of" The Summer Islands," relates a sto- 

 ry, in which the maternal tenderness of the Whale 

 is most affectingly displayed. A whale and her cub 

 had got into an arm of the sea, where, by the defec- 



