Tarpon Fishing \n Mexico. 21 



of the previous evening had been amply justified, I sleep undis- 

 turbed the sleep of the successful sportsman till the next morning. 

 About 9 a.m. my boatman and 1 take the train for the Barra. 

 Lying- on the shore of the sandy bay are the remains of four or 

 five tarpon, the victims of the sportsmen who had made this 

 convenient spot their headquarters during the last day or two. 

 But they were by no means neglected. Mother Nature never 

 discards her kaleidoscopic toys for long, and tliis is even more 

 quickly true in her watery kingdom than on land. In the water 

 she cannot bear to have any part of what she has wrested from the 

 realm of senseless matter, in any way inferior to that standard of 

 perfection to which she has brought the species into whose mould 

 she has cast it. All the denizens of the ocean, whose health or 

 strength has been impaired, are quickly absorbed into the health 

 and strength of other members of their genus ; so that Dame 

 Nature here is usually in such a hurry that she never discards at 

 all. And when she does the time is short before the sharks and 

 hosts of other scavengers, warring against the bacillus and the 

 return to far lower forms of life, change the form of and give back 

 motion to the dead. No miser ever guarded the gold won from 

 his neighbours more jealously than Nature guards what she has 

 won from inorganic matter. Doubtless her opponent will at some 

 future date reconquer all his losses on this planet ; only again at 

 some more remote age to play the loser ; and so let the game 

 swing on. The dead tarpon were being patiently watched by 

 some hundred carrion buzzards. (\'lls.) These birds are 

 extremely useful all over the country, and have the protection of 

 the law in the United States, and no one molests them in Mexico, 



