THE EUROPEAN SEAS. 



3 



having, when pursuing researches in various parts 

 of the European seas, found the want of some book 

 capable of affording a general view of their natural 

 history, and after a fair amount of personal expe- 

 rience in their exploration, still feeling that the same 

 want must perplex and impede the researches of 

 those who are beginning similar inquiries, I venture 

 on an attempt to fill the blank, with a fair con- 

 science and unabashed. Moreover it is becoming 

 that Britons, whether scientific or unscientific, who 

 boast at all fitting occasions of their aptitude to 

 rule the waves, should know something of the popu- 

 lation of their saline empire, especially of those 

 parts of it immediately in contact with their terres- 

 trial domain, and the coasts of the Continent to 

 which our United Kingdom appertains. In the fol- 

 lowing chapters I have endeavoured to lay before 

 my readers, in plain discourse, and with as few 

 technicalities as possible, the leading features of the 

 several regions of the European seas, to show how 

 they are connected, and how they differ, and to 

 attempt to explain the causes of their peculiarities. 



" I do not pretend," wrote Robert Boyle, " to have 

 visited the bottom of the sea ; but since none of the 

 naturalists whose writings I have yet met with, 

 have been there any more than I ; and it is a great 

 rarity in those cold parts of Europe to meet with 

 any men at all that have had at once the boldness, 

 the occasion, the opportunity, and the skill to pene- 

 trate into those concealed and dangerous recesses of 



