98 FISH-CULTURAL ASSOCIATION, 
that, but for the strong, bright-fronted Ram that intervenes, seems 
agape to swallow the suppliant Andromeda; Hydra, dripping stars as 
it goes, and trailing its gem-lit convolutions across the hemispheres ; 
the Flying-fish, feathered and beaked, darting its brief flight from the 
pole of the southern ecliptic; the Austral-fish, with radiant eyes up- 
lifted to the grateful flood that the Waterer forever pours upon it; the 
Sword-fish, cleaving its bright way to encounter in the ocean of the 
firmament its hereditary foe; the Tortoise, that in its starry concave 
holds the lyre whence Mercury first struck the music of the spheres: 
And, above all, the fishes of the zodiac, 
‘“The double Pisces, from their shining scale, 
Spread wat’ry influence and incline to sail.” 
foster the sailor-spirit in men and teach navigators to be boldly self- 
reliant, preside over sea-fights, and are the patrons of fishermen. 
But the children born under the sign are, by a poetical extension of 
the Venus tradition, hot-blooded, given to jealousies and strife; for 
the tradition is that ‘when the skies grew weak and the giants strove, 
and snaky typhon shook the throne of Jove,” Venus fled the tumultu- 
ous scene, and hiding herself in the Euphrates as a fish, inspired the 
scaly tribes with new passions, “and with the ocean mixt her fire.” So, 
too, the Southern fish claims Aphrodite’s favor, for the legend says 
that it saved her daughter from drowning in the Lake Boethe; and 
yet another claims for it that it is the progenitor of all the fishes in the 
firmament. Next “glowing” Cancer, 
** As close in’s shell he lies, affords his aid 
To greedy merchants and inclines to trade.”’ 
But over births his influence is hardly more auspicious than the 
Fishes’, though in omen it is happy— 
‘- The dream’s good; 
The Crab is in conjunction with the sun.”’ 
These whimsies of astrology still keep their places in our as- 
tronomies. They show how the unknown has ever been regarded 
as the supernatural or marvellous. 
From gems taken from the heads of fishes, rare wonders were 
worked by the Magi. Helen won suitors by a jewel out of the 
belly of a fish. Amphitrite rode about at her own sweet will in 
a sea-shell. Anda thousand other figments indicate that in the 
twilight of history the unknown above the earth was in strange 
association with the marvels beneath the sea. As the gentle Elia 
says: 
