SALMONIDJE. 35 



prefer the investigation of facts to the building up plausible theories — 

 to the greater diffusion of knowledge and love of scientific inquiry 

 among the masses, and, in no slight degree, to the able and laborious 

 system of experiments which have been set on foot and carried out by 

 country gentlemen and sportsmen, to many of whom the world of 

 letters is indebted for very interesting and remarkable discoveries. 



It is but a few years, comparatively speaking, since that accurate 

 observer and delightful writer, Gilbert White", of Selborne, the 

 most charming rural naturalist whom England — perhaps the world — 

 has produced, thought it not unworthy of his time or talents to enter 

 into a long train of investigation and argument, in order to prove that 

 the Swallow — as then appears to have been largely, if not generally 

 believed — did not pass the winter months in a torpid state, either in 

 the hollows of decayed trees and caverns, or beneath the waters of 

 stagnant pools and morasses. 



In like manner Mr. Audubon has been peculiarly minute in describ- 

 ing the migrations of the Sora Rail, as witnessed by himself, for the 

 purpose of counteracting the notion, which I myself still know to be 

 prevalent among the vulgar and ignorant where these birds abound, 

 that they burrow in the mud during the cold season, hybernating like 

 the Marmot or the Bear. 



If, then, errors so gross were commonly in vogue concerning animals, 

 the greater portion of whose life is spent before our very eyes ; • which 

 make their nests, rear their young, come and go visibly, and in such 

 manner that their presence and absence, nay, the periods of their 

 departure and return, must be observed even by the careless and inat- 

 tentive looker-on ; much more is it to be expected that the habits, 

 nay, the sexes, ages, and distinct species of fish, which rarely present 

 themselves to the eyes even of the most curious inquirers, which come 

 and go unseen and unsuspected, whose mysteries of generation and 

 reproduction are all performed in a medium the least penetrable to the 

 eyes of science, whose changes of size and color, from infancy to matu- 

 rity, pass utterly beyond our ken, should have been misconceived, mis- 

 interpreted, and misdescribed. 



Within the last few years more has been done to elucidate these 

 mysteries, and to bring us to an accurate knowledge of this interesting 



