286 THE HERRING. 



man is the only animal that has the control of his 

 powers ; and therefore he is the only one that can be 

 idle ; and when all the other creatures are in a state 

 of nature, that is, when they are not confined, fed, or 

 otherwise restrained by man, not only have an object 

 in what they do, but what they do is always the best 

 and shortest means to the accomplishment of that 

 object. The preservation of the individual and the 

 race are the only ultimate objects of animals which 

 have not the means of accumulating knowledge ; 

 and thus becoming wiser in one generation than in 

 another; and thus all that can be alleged of them 

 must conduce to the one or the other of these ends, 

 otherwise it is a fancy of man, and not a fact in natural 

 history. 



The alleged migration of the herring is a very strik- 

 ing instance of man's propensity to people nature with 

 his own whims. As the hordes that overran the empire 

 of the Romans (when its weakness and worthlessness 

 rendered it a piecemeal, and, therefore, an easy prey 

 to people whose numbers were but as a handful to its 

 whole population,) as those are said, rather roman- 

 tically, to have issued from the frozen bosom of the 

 north, that became the general origin of all sorts of 

 hordes, whose motions could not be distinctly seen 

 from the very beginning. 



Accordingly, in all those books called popular, which 

 pretend to treat of the habits of British fishes, the 

 pilgrimages of the herring have been described as an 

 established fact. Produced by some unknown process 

 in the polar regions, even at a time when the surface 

 there is solid ice and snow, under which the spawn 



