KIDD'S OWN JOUENAL. 



119 



ledge, partly in the phenomena of the external 

 world, and their judicious employment, and 

 partly in the innate laws of the moral and intel- 

 lectual faculties ; by pursuing these two rules we 

 shall arrive at practical and general truths. We 

 cannot, then, under any point of view, regard, as 

 an idle enterprise, the efforts of the physiologist, 

 who seeks to determine with precision how far 

 the senses extend their influence, mediate and 

 immediate, on the functions of a superior order. 

 In order to he able to deduce surer principles and 

 more general consequences, I have laid down in 

 my treatise on the functions of the senses (vol. i., 

 4to edit., p. 149, etc.), what belongs, and what 

 does not belong, to each sense in particular. In 

 treating of the organs of the relations of space, 

 colors, and sounds, I shall again prove, that 

 those have been wrong who have attributed the 

 faculty of finding one's way home from a distance 

 to the sense of smell; that of the talent for 

 painting to the eyes; that of music and lan- 

 guage to the hearing. Accordingly, I shall say 

 no more on this subject in this place. 



SALT-WATER FISH. 



THE MACKEREL. 



The mackerel was supposed by Anderson, 

 Duhamel, and others, to be a fish of passage; 

 performing, like some birds, certain periodical 

 migrations, and making long voyages from 

 north to south at one season of the year, and the 

 reverse at another. It does not appear to 

 have been sufficiently considered, that, inha- 

 biting a medium which varied but little, either 

 in its temperature or productions, locally, fishes 

 are removed beyond the influence of the two 

 principal causes which make a temporary change 

 of situation necessary. Independently of the 

 difficulty of tracing the course pursued through 

 so vast an expanse of water, the order of the 

 appearance of the fish at different places on the 

 shores of the temperate and southern parts of 

 Europe is the reverse of that which, according to 

 their theory, ought to have happened. It is 

 known that this fish is now taken, even on some 

 parts of our own coast, in every month of the 

 year. 



It is probable that the mackerel inhabits 

 almost the whole of the European seas; and 

 the law of nature, which obliges them and many 

 others to visit the shallower water of the shores 

 at a particular season, appears to be one of those 

 wise and bountiful provisions of the Creator, by 

 which not only is the species perpetuated with 

 the greatest certainty, but a large portion of the 

 parent animals are thus brought within the 

 reach of man; who, but for the action of this 

 law, would be deprived of many of those species 

 most valuable to him as food. For the mackerel, 

 dispersed over the immense surface of the deep, 

 no effective fishery could be carried on; but, 

 approaching the shore as they do from all direc- 

 tions, and roving along the coast collected in 

 immense shoals, millions are caught, which yet 

 form but a very small portion compared with the 

 myriads _ that escape. This subject receives 

 further illustration from a fresh-water fish, as 



stated in the Magazine of Natural History, vol. 

 vii. p. 637. " When the char spawn, they are 

 seen in the shallow parts of the rocky lakes (in 

 which only they are found), and some of the 

 streams that run into them : they are then taken in 

 abundance; but as soon as the spawning is over, 

 they retire into the deepest parts of the lake, and 

 are but rarely caught." It may be observed 

 further, that, as there is scarcely a month 

 throughout the year in which the fishes of some 

 one or more species are not brought within the 

 reach of man by the operation of the imperative 

 law of nature referred to, a constant succession 

 of wholesome food is thus spread before him, 

 which, in the first instance, costs him little 

 beyond the exercise of his ingenuity and labor 

 to obtain. 



Mackerel were first allowed to be cried 

 through the streets of London on a Sunday in 

 1698; and the practice prevails to the present 

 time. In May, 1807, the first Brighton boat- 

 load of mackerel sold at Billingsgate for forty 

 guineas per hundred — seven shillings each, 

 reckoning six score to the hundred ; the highest 

 price ever known at that market. The next 

 boat-load produced but thirteen guineas per 

 hundred. Mackerel were so plentiful at Dover, 

 in 1808, that they were sold sixty for a shilling. 

 The success of the fishery in 1821, was beyond 

 all precedent. The value of the catch of sixteen 

 boats from Lowestoft, on the 30th of June, 

 amounted to £5,252; and it is supposed that 

 there was no less an amount than £14,000 alto- 

 gether realised by the owners and men con- 

 cerned in the fishery of the Suffolk coast. In 

 March, 1833, on a Sunday, four Hastings boats 

 brought on shore 10,800 mackerel; and the next 

 day, two boats brought 7,000 fish. Early in the 

 month of February, 1834, one boat's crew from 

 Hastings cleared £100 by the fish caught in one 

 night ; and a large quantity of very fine- macke- 

 rel appeared in the London market in the second 

 week of the same month. They were cried 

 through the streets of London three for a shilling 

 on the 14th and 22nd of March, 1834, says 

 Yarrell in his History of British Fishes, and had 

 then been plentiful for a month. The boats 

 engaged in fishing are usually attended by other 

 fast-sailing vessels, which are sent away with the 

 fish taken. From some situations, these vessels 

 sail away direct for the London market; at 

 others, they make for the nearest point from 

 which they can obtain land-carriage for their 

 fish. 



THE GLOW-WORM. 



This morning, when the earth and sky 

 Were blooming with the blush of Spring, 



I saw thee not, thou humble fly, 



Nor thought upon thy gleaming wing. 



But now the skies have lost their hue, 

 And sunny lights no longer play, 



I see thee, and I bless thee too, 

 For sparkling o'er the dreary way. 



Oh! let me hope that thus for me, 

 When life and love shall lose their bloom, 



Some milder joys may come, like thee, 

 To light, if not to warm the gloom. 



