CHAPTER VI 



FISH, THE PEOPLE OF THE SEA 



SURPRISING and beautiful as the ocean bot- 

 Otom may be, it is still a negligible quantity 

 when we consider the finny monsters of the deep. 

 However lovely the virgin forests or the most 

 sophisticated of Italian gardens, human interest 

 centres around what is like itself vital, active, 

 moving. 



The plants of the sea correspond to the plants 

 of the land. There are no doubt forests of great 

 trees quite comparable to those of our world 

 which man will never wander in but as brother 

 to the driftwood, flotsam and jetsam. 



Fish are the people of the sea, far more numer- 

 ous than men upon land, far stranger both in 

 their appearance and habits, far more different 

 one from another than the races of men. They 

 live in an era when the monsters of antiquity 

 are not all dead. Leviathan, which is half animal 

 and half fish, still sports in the great plains of 

 the ocean. It is he who supplies us with bones 

 for corsets and the "best cod-liver oil." Whales 



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