88 ANGLING. 



SECTION XVTT. 



The Geographical distribution of Fishes. 



WE shall now conclude our general exposition of 

 the subject, by a brief allusion to one of its 

 branches, of the highest interest to the philosophi- 

 cal enquirer. Our knowledge of the laws which 

 regulate the distribution of fishes is meagre in the 

 extreme ; in other words, the facts concerning their 

 characteristic localities are few, and have never been 

 generalised. From the immeasurable extent and 

 continuous nature of the fluid which they inhabit, 

 they are supplied by nature with greater facilities 

 of dispersion than most other animals ; and the 

 greater equality of the temperature of water, com- 

 pared with that of earth or air, admits in several 

 instances of the same species inhabiting a vast ex- 

 tent of country. Those races, especially, which 

 travelling together in shoals, which " bank the mid- 

 sea," and speedily consume the natural food which 

 each particular spot affords them, are obliged like 

 the pastoral tribes of old, or the woodland hunters 

 of America, to remove from place to place in search 

 of additional supplies ; and so the species acquires 

 a more widely extended distribution. It is thus 

 that the cod and herring are spread over a vast 

 extent of the northern ocean, and in undiminished 

 numbers, notwithstanding the war of extermination 

 which man and other voracious animals appear to 

 wage against them. 



