FISHES. 4-07 



quently are improper to strengthen the body. In this diversity 

 of opinion, it is the wisest way to eat our fish in the ordinary 

 manner, and pay no great attention to cooks or doctors. 



I cannot conclude this chapter without putting a question to 

 the learned, which I confess I am not able to resolve. How 

 comes it that fish, which are bred in a salt element, have yet no 

 salt to the taste, or that is capable of being extracted from them "'^ 



CHAP. II. 



or CETACEOUS FISHES IN GENERAL. 



As on land there are some orders of animals that seem form- 

 ed to command the rest, with greater powers and more various 

 instincts, so in the ocean there are fishes which seem formed 

 upon a nobler plan than others, and that, to their fishy form, 

 join the appetites and the conformation of quadrupeds. These 

 are all of the cetaceous kind ; and so much raised above their fel- 

 lows of the deep, in their appetites and instincts, that almost all 

 our modern naturalists have fairly excluded them from the finny 

 tribes, and will have them called, not fishes, but great beasts of 

 the ocean. With them it would be as improper t^j^ay men go 

 to Greenland fishing for whale, as it would be To say that a 

 sportsman goes to Blackwall a fowling formackarel. 



Yet, notwithstanding philosophers, mankind will always have 

 their own way of talking ; and, for my own part, I think them 

 here in the right. A different formation of the lungs, stomach, 

 and intestines ; a different manner of breathing or propagating ; 



I Tliouffli fishes live in a salt element they do not subsist on it. All the 

 water they take into their mouths is again disrharged throuph the gills, 

 after retaining the air contained in it for the purposes of life. The medium 

 of water answers the precise purpose to fishes, that the medium of air docs 

 to man and other land animals. In inspiration, the element is received into 

 the lungs or gills, and in expiration is returned deprived of its purer parts, 

 which are retained for the purpose of animal economy. And wh.itever salt 

 may be taken into the stomachs of fishes with their food, is decomposed and 

 separated Into its component parts of acid and soda. The sailor th.it feeds 

 for twelve months together on salted meats, has not his own flesh made salt ; 

 but a decomposition taking place during the process nf digestion, he becomes 

 corrupted and scorbutic by the excess of soda and magnesia. 

 III. 2 Q 



