164 OUK HERITAGE THE SEA 



particularize a little, to survey tlie various parts of the 

 ocean within our knowledge, and make some effort, 

 however feeble, to realize what this beneficent element 

 holds in store for the sons of man in the way of food. 



So vast is the sea, that the mere fact of being able 

 from so infinitesimal a speck on it as a boat to let 

 down hook or net where the bottom may be reached 

 and be sure of bringing up some kind of fish, will, 

 if we think for a moment, fill us with amazement at 

 the amount of its population. It is as if a balloonist, 

 stealing silently along at night over an utterly un- 

 known country, should only have to let down a basket 

 on a line to haul it up almost immediately filled with 

 good food. But when we remember that at certain 

 seasons and in certain places this population is aug- 

 mented to such an extent that it can only be com- 

 pared to but, no, we have nothing at all on earth 

 with which the wealth of the sea can be compared. 

 Not even the swarms of flies in the most vermin- 

 haunted regions of the earth can for a moment com- 

 pare with the solid armies of the herring, the mackerel, 

 or the cod. Take, for instance, the first of these 

 citizens, the one with which as food we are most 

 familiar, but of whose habits even the most learned of 

 sea-naturalists know so little the herring. From 

 those hidden recesses of the sea, where the infallible 

 instinct of the female Clupea harengus bids her lay her 

 hundred thousand eggs, he emerges, a host uncount- 

 able, nay, unthinkable, in its numbers. And yet he 

 has been providing food for vast numbers of other fish 

 during the period between his appearance as an egg 

 and his attainment of adolescence. Suppose that 

 those natural checks upon his numbers could have 



