240 
A NATURALIST ON THE PROWL. 
but changeful tints of mellow light : no sound, but a kind 
of murmurous silence more or less distinct. 
To this weird world fishes belong by birthright, and in it 
they seem to be in their proper place ; but how did air- 
breathing beasts become natives there ? How came the 
Red Indian to the New World, where Columbus found 
him ? There be many questions, but few answers. Otters 
invade the world of water, and spend much of their lives 
in it, but they come home to a warm burrow and a dry 
bed. The seal, too, and the walrus hunt for their prey in 
the deep, but their birthplace is on the ice-covered shore, 
and there they return to rest. With the porpoise and 
the dolphin and the grampus and the whale the case is 
different. They have cut off all correspondence with their 
blood relations on the land. Their fore-feet are fins, only 
two bones remain to witness that they have a hereditary 
right to hind legs, and their tails are modelled after the 
tails of fishes. There is one bond they cannot break, 
however. They must breathe our air or die. So they 
come to the surface of the water, to the borders of our 
world, and lift their heads, and we see them. And how 
do we welcome them ? With harpoons. 
The fishermen of these coasts set little value on the 
