226 ISLES OF SUMMER. 
placed in the wide domain of fact. While Victor Hugo’s “devil 
fish,” closely resembles, in many particulars, the gigantic cuttle 
fish, yet, to some extent, it is a creature which the imagination 
has constructed ppon a substantial basis of fact. A scientific 
gentleman, learned in all the piscatory learning of the present 
day, stated in our presence before the Connecticut Academy of 
Arts and Sciences, that he had no doubt of the existence of the 
sea serpent, and that before many years it will be captured and 
critically examined by scientific experts. There is something 
truly grand in the movements of the monsters of the deep 
through the vast depths and immense spaces of the great world 
of waters. But itis apparent that while some fish are able to 
wander at will in various directions around the world, others are 
localized by their necessities, and complete their little circle of 
life very near their family spawning ground. Hence the water 
that surrounds the Isles of Summer, and that covers the Banks 
out of which they rise, has its own peculiar and wonderful fauna, 
some glimpses of which were revealed to us while we were look- 
ing through the water glasses at the corals, and the curious and 
wonderful forms of life which surround and adorn them. 
Many of these fish Mr. Phelps secured and preserved, and 
having carefully and critically examined them at his home in 
Vermont, and closely studied them both in and out of the water 
during his five months stay in Nassau, he hag furnished us de- 
tailed descriptions of some of them, which we have utilized. We 
have edited his notes, and shaped them somewhat to fill the 
limited space that we have been able to spare for them in a vol- 
ume which treats of so many other subjects. We did not our- 
selves make the fish a special object of study. We have retained, 
as far as possible, the language of Mr. Phelps, and to him and 
Mr. Catesby should be given credit for whatever of merit there 
may be in nearly all our piscatory pen pictures, 
