Introduction 1 1 



which man, by reason of his limitations, can know prac- 

 tically nothing. But I do hope to include all the fauna 

 of the sea likely to make interesting and popular studies 

 — no, not studies. I want to dissociate the idea of study 

 from the book altogether. If it smells of the lamp I 

 shall be greatly disappointed, and so will my readers. It 

 should read like a series of intimate biographies of tried 

 and trusted friends, whose lives, though passed on a 

 different plane from ours, are no less full of interest. 



A high and solid wall of division separates us from the 

 full fellowship with the lower animals which many of us 

 feel would add a new zest to life. Now and then it gets 

 low and thin, as in the case of the dog, the horse, the 

 elephant, the cat ; but even with these domestic friends 

 there always meets us the baffling barrier, preventing the 

 contact of our minds with what fills the same function in 

 the animal. And if this is so in regard to those closely 

 associated creatures, how much more is it in regard to 

 the wild ones, and how immeasurably greater in the case 

 of those interesting beings of whom we only catch fleet- 

 ing glimpses as it were. Here imagination aided by 

 experience is the only interpreter. It may mistranslate, 

 it may fail to understand many things at all, but on the 

 other hand it may — it has, it often does — hit upon the 

 exact truth as to the inner lives of its subjects, at any rate, 

 in far greater measure than any statistical compilation 

 can ever do. 



To conclude this brief introduction, let me say that in 

 some cases I feel it will be preferable to make the sketch 

 an apparent autobiography as it were — to let the creature 

 written about tell his own story in our language, but from 

 his point of view. This, I feel, would hardly be appro- 

 priate to all the life-histories of the sea-folk, but in some 



