12 FISHES OF FANCY. 



swallow, sea-parrot, and so forth ; while heralds are re- 

 sponsible for the perpetuation of many amphibious hybrids. 

 But this tendency to see in the water a reflection of 

 everything on land is only an instance of human self- 

 consciousness, for if we were to be just to our seniors in 

 creation, and more modest, we should call ourselves land^ 

 manatees, our elephants land-whales, and our tigers land- 

 sharks. As Sir Thos. Browne says " If we concede that 

 the animals of one element might bear the names of 

 those in the other, the watery productions should have 

 the pre-nomination." 



Yet at the bottom of the sea are green fields such as 

 Israel walked over when crossing the smitten flood in 

 which the small fish take refuge from the greater, just as 

 the field-mice and birds and insects hide in our own grass. 

 The Water-baby found at the sea-bottom both meadows 

 and woods ; and Strabo tells us of the flocks of rich fat 

 tunnies that feed on the acorns of submarine oaks. And 

 who would doubt their existence who has read how the 

 prince rides out into mid-ocean to find the casket among 

 the roots of the tree ? Once upon a time, too, if the poet 

 is to be believed, our birds were all creatures of the sea. 

 Accident or high spirits took them out of the water into 

 the moist herbage of the banks, whence they could not 

 escape, but which was just wet enough to support life. 

 Their progeny throve there, but their fins, shrivelling, 

 split up, and the scales, crackling, fell off, and by-and-by 

 a woolly growth took their place and eventually became 

 feathers. The under-fins, with which they used to scrape 

 their way along the sea-floor, became real legs, and thus 

 the bird grew into existence. This un-Darwinian evolution 

 was science a few centuries, ago, just as it is science now 

 to understand that the whale once had legs, and roamed 



