86 I see you, my boy. Chapt. vi-. 



It is not a tenth of the size of a man, and in mutual 

 observations the larger object is obviously calculated to 

 be seen first. Then its color, like that of most, I may 

 say all, animals, is beautifully adapted to conceal it in 

 its usual habitat, whereas a man who clothes himself by 

 his own imperfect lights and his tailors, does so in direct 

 variance with all the rules of nature. The object of his 

 fashions is not so much to conceal his existence as to be 

 "the observed of all observers," and sometimes indeed to 

 be comfortable. What more readily attracts the eye than 

 a white paggaree, and an almost white coat to reflect the 

 sun? A black coat is very little better, and is noticeable, 

 as every sportsman knows, at a great distance. Then 

 consider the difference of position. The fish is against a 

 back ground, the bottom, of nearly his own color, where- 

 as the man is standing out in bold relief against the sky. 

 The fish furthermore is motionless, while the man is wav- 

 ing about a great stick of 10 or 16 feet long, moving his 

 arms to do it, and cannot even keep his legs still. He 

 is moving the whole of his comparatively big person as 

 he walks along the very edge of the stream, and not 

 unfrequently on the top of a high bank. 



But besides these obvious advantages of comparative 

 size, of color, of position, and of being motionless, the 

 fish has still another very materially favoring circum- 

 stance in the element in which he is. Water refracts, 

 or breaks the natural course of the rays of light. Newton 

 says "refraction out of a rarer medium into a denser is 

 "made toward the perpendicular," and as water is denser 



