INTRODUCTION. xv. 



wonderful a profusion, to re-stock all the watery world of the 

 northern hemisphere; and that this immense icy protube- 

 rance of the globe, this gathering together, this hoard of 

 congealed waters, is periodically diminished by the influence 

 of the unsetting summer's sun, whose rays being perpetually, 

 though obliquely, shed, during that season, on the widely 

 extended rim of the frozen continent, gradually dissolve its 

 margin, which is thus crumbled into innumerable floating 

 isles, that are driven southward to replenish the seas of 

 warmer climates.* 



Amidst these drifts of ice, and following this widely- 

 spreading current, teeming with life, the whole host of sea-fowl 

 find in the waters an inexhaustible supply of food : for the 

 great movement, the immense southward migration of fishes 

 is then begun, and shoal after shoal, probably as the removal 

 of their dark icy canopy unveils them to the sun, are invited 

 forth, and, guided by its light and heat, poured forward in 

 thousands of myriads, in multitudes which set all calculation 

 at defiance. The flocks of sea-birds, for their numbers 

 baffle the power of figures ;f. but the swarms of fishes, as if 

 engendered in the clouds, and showered down like the rain, 

 are multiplied in an incomprehensible degree : they may in- 

 deed be called infinite, if infinity were applicable to any thing 

 created. Of all these various tribes of fishes, thus pressing 

 forward on their southern route, that of the Herring is the 

 most numerous. Closely embodied in resplendent columns 

 of many miles in length and breadth, and in depth from the 

 surface to the bottom of the sea, the shoals of this tribe 

 peacefully glide along, and glittering like a huge reflected 

 rainbow, or Aurora Borealis, attract the eyes of all their atten- 

 dant foes. Other kinds of fishes, in duller garbs, keep also 



" The same happens in the southern hemisphere, by the melting 

 of the ice at the south pole. 



t A bird may lay ten eggs and hatch them ; but the roe of a Her- 

 ring is said to contain ten thousand. 



