i88i.] 
293 
Analyses of Books. 
able skeleton I know not, and I should be much obliged if any of 
my readers could find out why the chub requires such a compli- 
cated system of bones.” We quote this remark as characteristic 
of the author’s vein of thought. 
Feeding some tame cod-fish with a variety of matter he offered 
them a dead viper, when they all swam away ! The following 
passage is significant : — 44 There seems also to be among fish, as 
among men, what the people in India call caste ; that is to say a 
meeting of class A with class Z strikes a note of discord which 
no amount of the so much vaunted education of modern days 
will create into a concord.” The conger eel Mr. Buckland thinks 
may have given rise to many of the stories of sea-serpents. 
Why is it, by the way, that in the south of England, the conger 
and the halibut are considered inferior to the cod, which, sauces 
apart, has as little flavour as a boiled dish-cloth ? 
On the 44 balance of life” (p. 73) the author over-balances him- 
self. He tells us that 44 carnivorous animals have few at a birth, 
herbivorous animals many.” We always thought that a cow, a 
ewe, or a goat never produced as many young at a birth as do the 
dog, the cat, or the semi-predaceous sow. 
The gudgeon, we are told, are very fond of living in sewer- 
water, which would be immediately fatal to a trout or a salmon. 
We find an abstract of the recommendations of a commission 
appointed in 1879 to examine into the herring-fisheries of Scot- 
land. One of their conclusions was that 44 the Sea Birds Preser- 
vation Adt, protecting gannets and other predaceous birds which 
cause a vast annual destruction of herrings should be repealed in 
so far as it applies to Scotland.” Here is the difficulty in pro- 
tecting animals of any class. What seems right from one point 
of view is objected to when considered from another. On p. 120 
is the statement that nearly all the herrings taken in the Scotch 
fisheries were exported to Protestant countries, whereas the takes 
of Cornish pilchards were exported to Catholic countries. Mr. 
Buckland adds 44 there must be some good physiological reason 
for this curious fadt !” A little further, in a chapter on the 
lamprey we meet with this singular sentence : — 44 On the Loire, 
as at Gloucester, they make them into pies, and are said to be 
exceedingly good.” 
The common stories about the longevity of the pike are dis- 
missed as fabulous, though it does not appear upon what evi- 
dence save 44 improbability.” Concerning the attendance of the 
pilot-fish ( Naucrates ductor) upon sharks, Mr. Buckland suggests 
that its object is very probably to pick parasitic vermin off the 
shark’s body. In the chapter on the sole we meet with a fadt 
not generally known: — 44 Young plaice and soles when first 
hatched out always swim on their edge for about a week, and in 
this condition have their eyes upon different sides of the head.” 
The old tradition that the tench is the pike’s physician is rejected, 
for the author, like Waterton, can be sceptical as well as credu- 
