5.')G mSTOKY OF 



take the advantage of this treasure, providentially thrown 

 before them. The natives sometimes enclose a bay of several 

 miles extent with their nets called saines. To direct them in 

 their operations, there were some years ago (but I believe they 



to particular parts of the coast, wliich did not seem to depend »ipon any 

 known law, naturally enough led the inhabitants of the places which they 

 thus periodically, but irregularly, visited, to impute to them certain super- 

 stitious likes and dislikes. The naturalists, too, or those who took upou 

 themselves that character, publisliing their opinions from little observation 

 and less reflection, rendered the delusion more extensive and inveterate ; 

 till those who had never seen a live herring, were able to trace its migra. 

 tions in the deep with as much certainty as they could the motion of the 

 hands upon the dial of the village clock. 



The herrings do not come in myriads from the Polar Sea, beginning their 

 progress in January, because there are no means of producing them there. 

 Spawn has not been found to animate in any place except floating near the 

 surface, or in shallow water, where both the sun and the air act upon it ; 

 and while the Polar Seas and shores are open to such action, the herrings 

 are not there ; they are on our shores, the full-grown and the young. But 

 setting aside the impossibility, the supposed emigration would be without 

 an object ; they would not come for food, as they are said to leave the north 

 just when food would be found there ! and if they are annually produced in 

 the north, they could not come to our shores for the purpose of spawning, 

 even though they are all obviously in preparation for such a purpose. Be- 

 side, there is no animal that migrates southward in the spring, and therefore 

 the theory would require one law for the rest of creation, and another for 

 the herring — that the latter should be chilled by the general warmth of the 

 spring, and warmed by the Polar frost, now, so far is the production of fish 

 from being independent of the influence of heat, that, just as we would be 

 led to infer from the slow progress of the solar beams through the element 

 in which they live, they require the whole, or the greater part of our sum- 

 mer, to matiu-e the germs of their countless broods. Nay, it appears that 

 many, if not most of the species, cannot mature their spawn in the depths of 

 the ocean, to which they retire to recruit their strength ; but that they come 

 to the shores and shallows, where the heat of the sun can penetrate to the bot- 

 tom, and be reflected by it, for the purpose of maturing as well as of deposit- 

 ing their spawn. We know not, and we cannot know, the secrets of those 

 mighty depths which no plummet can fathom ; but we have every reason to 

 uelieve that there is a profundity where animals, constructed as the fishes that 

 we see are, could not by possibility exist. Imagine the pressure of a thousand 

 atmospheres, or between six and seven tons, upon every square inch of sur. 

 face, and think of the miracle of muscular power which could give motion 

 even!to the smallest fish there ; imagine, too, a permanence of state where the 

 air never moves, and the sun never warms ; and think what a dwelling for 

 that which must breathe by an apparatus so delicate as the gills of a fish I 

 It may be said, that God is capable of making creatures adapted for living 

 tl\ere We do not deny that he is, neither do we deny their existence ; 

 but we deny that the laws of nature are ever violated, which they would 

 bi', were the fishes which we know able to move \uider such a pressure, o» 



