THE SCOOPING AVOCET. 225 



result is kindness to all. It is well known that if a meadow 

 is neither grazed nor mown, the kindly sod sooner gives place 

 to inferior vegetation to moss, ragweed, dock, sedge, or 

 something else according to the situation. If a fish-pond or 

 a game-close is over-preserved, nature avenges the breach 

 of her law, and sends death in a way which we do not 

 understand. We call it epizooty, that is, something which 

 falls " upon the life ; " but what falls, or how it falls, we know 

 not. 



Were it not that the tribes of the living world restrain 

 each other, the duration of the whole would be brief far 

 more so than those who have not reflected on the subject 

 would readily imagine. It is in the mutual destructions 

 (which are in truth preservations) that we can best see the 

 wisdom and goodness of the Creator, as it is in the principles 

 which render these necessary to the system, that we can be 

 most impressed with (for nowhere can we understand) the 

 infinitude of his power. 



When the lesson arises naturally, it is always a delightful 

 as well as a salutary one ; and nowhere is there perhaps a 

 more striking instance than in one of those powers over 

 which the avocet is in part placed as a check the power of 

 multiplication in fishes. If that power could act without 

 limitation for the space of a very few years, the produce of 

 the fish in any one of our rivers, nay of any one species of 

 them, would build the valley of that river mountain height 

 with fishes. 



The average rate of increase in river fishes is more than 

 fifteen thousand-fold to the single fish, at one single spawn- 

 ing ; but we will call it ten thousand : then let us propose 

 the question, " In what time would the productive power 

 of a single pair of fishes, if it could act unrestrained, 

 convert the matter of the whole solar system into fish 

 on the supposition that they spawned at the age of three 



VOL. IT. Q 



