nsHi:s. 565 



state, that few baits will tempt them to their destruction. At 

 that season, they forsake the shallow waters, and seek those deep 

 holes to be -found in every river, where they continue for days 

 together, without ever appearing to move. The cold seems to 

 atfect them ; for at that time they lie close to the bottom, where 

 the water is most warm, and seldom venture out, except the day 

 be peculiarly fine, and the shallows at the edges of the stream 

 become tepified by the powerful rays of the sun. Indeed, I 

 have been assured, that some fishes may be rendered so torpid 

 by the cold, in the northern rivers, as to be frozen up in the great 

 masses of ice, in which they continue for several months together, 

 seemingly without life or sensation, the prisoners of congela- 

 tion, and waiting the approach of a warmer sun to restore them 

 at once to life and liberty. Thus that cheerful luminary not 

 only distributes health and vegetation to the productions of the 

 earth, but is ardently sought even by the gelid inhabitants of the 

 water. 



As fish are enemies one to another, so each species is infested 

 with worms of different kinds pecdiiar to itself. The great fish 

 abound with them ; and the little ones are not entirely free. 

 These troublesome vermin lodge themselves either in the jaws 

 and the intestines internally, or near the fins without. When 

 fish are healthy and fat they are not much annoyed by them ; 

 but in winter, when they are lean or sickly, they then suffer very 

 much. 



Nor does the reputed longevity of this class secure them from 

 tlii'ir peculiar disorders. They are not only affected by too much 

 cold, but there are frequently certain dispositions of the element 

 in which they reside unfavourable to their liealth and propaga- 

 tion. Some ponds they will not breed in, however artfully dis- 

 posed for supplying them with fresh recruits of water, as well 

 !is provision. In some seasons they arc found to feel epidemic 

 disorders, and are seen dead by the water side, without any ap- 

 jiiuent cause : yet still they are animals of all others the most 

 Aivacious, and they often live and subsist upon such substances 

 as are poisonous to the more perfect classes of animated nature. 



It is not easy to (k'termine whether the poisonous fuialities 

 uhiih many of tiieni are found to possess, cither when tliey 

 liound our bodies externally with their spines, or when they are 

 unwarily eaten at our tables, arises from this cause. That num- 



IK. 3 i: 



