78 ANGLING. 



sometimes gradually softened into each other, and 

 in all cases harmonising with a chaste fulness of 

 effect, which Titian and Eubens might envy, but 

 could never equal. For what reason, then, it has 

 been asked, has all this adornment been so lavishly 

 bestowed on creatures which can scarcely perceive 

 each other amid the dim perpetual twilight of the 

 deep ? Shakspeare has already said, that there are 

 " more things in heaven and earth, than are dreanVt 

 of in our philosophy ;" and we fear it is no answer 

 to the foregoing question to add, that the same 

 observation applies with even greater truth to the 

 " waters beneath the earth" 



SECTION XIII. 



The Circulating System of Fishes. 



IN common with warm-blooded animals, fishes 

 are provided with a complete circulation for the 

 body, and with another equally complete for the 

 organs of respiration, and with a particular abdo- 

 minal circulation, terminating at the liver by means 

 of the vena porta ; but their peculiar character, so 

 far as regards the sanguiferous system, consists in 

 this, that the branchial circulation alone is pro- 

 vided at its base with a muscular apparatus or 

 heart, corresponding to the right auricle and ven- 

 tricle of the higher classes, while nothing of the 

 kind exists at the base of the circulating system of 



