74 FISH-CULTURAL ASSOCIATION. 
Learning has grown so great in our day that the genius of 
one man can grasp no more than a part of it; so that in propor- 
tion as learning becomes larger, generalization, which is the 
final end of learning, grows more difficult. Worse than this, 
the mind employed on particular investigations gets unsymme- 
trical. The side that is used is strengthened; the disused side 
fails, and there results a scholar who believes in one set of ideas 
only. 
After all then, we must look with a certain envy at the state 
of mind of old Rondelet. Like most men of his age he had that 
richness of thought and expression which comes of many-sided 
culture, and a strong faith in things both material and immaterial. 
When he said “ Dei potentia,” he distinctly meant power of God, 
and not “ potentialities” or “ molecular environment ” or “ pow- 
er that works for righteousness,” or any of those modern euphu- 
isms which taste in the mouth like weak boiled arrow-root. Never- 
theless, if we look closely, we can find the beginnings of that 
skepticism which plays so great a partin our day. For both he 
and his Bishop Pelicier were strongly suspected of favoring the 
Reformation. As to his colleague, Rabelais, he was noted for 
his unorthodox opinions, and went so far as to describe the fu- 
ture life as a “great perhaps.” 
But it is high time to leave Rondelet, and turn our attention to 
his sea-fishes. Their importance was great then—it is greater now- 
We might know by analogy, did we not know by actual research, 
that fishes have ever been of the first importance for man’s 
food. Their natural abundance and the easy capture of shallow 
species put them within the reach of the primitive savage. The 
skeleton of the pre-historic chief, found in the cave of Mentone 
had as a head ornament, a net strung with Trochus shells, show- 
ing that he had walkedthe beaches of the neighboring Mediter- 
ranean, whose waters doubtless furnished his food. 
The shell heaps of Scandinavia and of America, contain abun- 
dant bones of fish. Morton, of Merry Mount (1628), gives us a 
good idea how these shell heaps were formed, when he tells how 
the Indians came each year to the shore near Quincy, in Massa- 
chusetts, and there camped for a long time, feasting on the plen- 
tiful clams and lobsters, and alewives and striped bass, whose 
