420 
THE COTTAGE GARDENER. 
September 30. 
banks of immense inland lakes. One is almost led to say, 
that there ought to havo existed such a form of Paganism. 
The great serpent which encircles the world can he no 
other than the ocoan stream. But Neptune has so little 
reality, tliat he is not even a myth. He is no more a thing 
1 of faith, than Britannia, with her trident, on a half-penny. 
! Wo just think of him as a personage in one of Verrio’s 
j allegorical frescoes, as one of the masks who open or con¬ 
clude a pantomime, or as the jolly tar in rude travestie, who 
comes to shave, with iron hoop, the novice making his first 
transit of the Equinoctial Line. 
Our lovely lake, whereon we are now swimming with 
delight, is fresh water, clear, sweet, and tepid. Put your 
hand in ; how smooth and soft it feels, making the immer¬ 
sion of the whole body, as an embrace of enjoyment and 
possession, almost irresistible! Yonder, on the other side 
of those sand-hills, roars a vast mass of waters, containing 
no very great admixture of other element with such par¬ 
ticles as these, but which produce a most wonderful effect, 
even on life itself. Listen ! That murmur is sent forth by 
the waves of The Sea. 
But it is a popular error to sub-divide all waters into two 
kinds only, the fresh and the salt, as much as it would be 
to speak of all climates as either hot or cold. There are 
as many intermediate degrees of saltness as of temperature, 
which are agreeable, in a different measure, to the consti¬ 
tution of different species of aquatio creatures. And there 
is no guessing beforehand what each will like, or what it 
can stand. Mr. Darwin, in his Naturalist’s Journal, tells of 
living things found in saturated ponds of brine. Among 
fresh water fishes, the pike turns up on the admixture of a 
very slight proportion of salt water, as lias been occasionally 
seen in the East-Anglian Broads. The perch and the 
bream bear more. The eel thrives, and fattens, and acquires 
its best flavour in waters decidedly brackish. On the other 
hand, several sea fish, as the grey mullet, seem to have no 
objection to, and even to prefer, waters with a less than 
usual quantity of salt in solution. I do not here allude to 
the complete change of medium which the salmon and 
others experience every season. They enter the fresh 
waters for the sake of spawning; but the purer element 
may be periodically as necessary to their then state of 
health, as it is on first hatching to that of the fry. It is 
curious, however, that the short jaunt from salt to fresh 
water, and again from fresh to salt, which proves so salutary 
to the fish, is apparently fatal to its parasites. The change 
of air does not suit them. The sea-lice adhering to the 
back of a fat, glittering salmon, are sure proof that it is “ a 
fresh-run ” fish—a new arrival from the ocean. They quit 
their hold an hour or two after entering the river. On its 
return, the poor shotten, black, emaciated creature suffers 
from a worse nuisance, i. e., whitish worm-like infestors of 
its gills, whose acquaintance it has made somehow during 
its sojourn amidst inland waters, but which are supposed to 
be obliged to quit their hold soon after they have heard the 
roar of the breakers, and tasted their quality. 
The undecided and hypothetical way in which I speak of | 
these parasites of the salmon, arises from the fact that the 
metamorphoses, and all the physical arrangements, of such j 
creatures are so extraordinary, and the adaptation of living ! 
beings to the circumstances under which they are required 
to live, are so marvellous and unexpected, that though the j 
sea-louse and the fresh-water worm (one found upon the [ 
scales of the fish, the other in its gills) are believed to be : 
utterly distinct creatures, it is quite possible that they are 1 
only successive forms of the same individual parasite. The 
sea-louse may be designed to reproduce in fresh waters, as 
well as the salmon. Its minute young, in the form of ani¬ 
malcules, may be invisibly dispersed through the streams, 
breathed by the fish, and so may attach themselves to their 
ordained habitat, the gills, during the passage of the water 
through them. A transformation there, while the salmon 
is out at sea, and a shifting of quarters from them to the 
outer cuticle, is less difficult to imagine than the change of 
a hot in a horse’s stomach, to a winged-fly, which shall buzz 
about the quadruped and lay its eggs on the hide, only 
within reach of the tongue that is to lick them off and 
swallow them for hatching! These mysteries are yet but 
imperfectly unveiled. Mr. Denny has still a wide field 
before him, 
A. scale graduated in degrees of saltucss, or haliometer, 
might be drawn up, of which fresh water would be the zero, 
and oceanio saltness indicate a conspicuous stage—a sort of 
freezing, or a boiling-point—continuing to higher pro- i 
portions of saline solution ; and it would be interesting to 
note the range along the scale taken by different creatures , 
as their element. Plaice and flounders are capable of bearing 
water perfectly fresh; several of the flat fish will put up i 
with a very short allowance of salt in their respiratory and j 
natatory medium, e. g., soles and turbots. No fish ought 
to enter the mouths of rivers which could not cheerfully 
submit to such a deficiency; though worse misfortunes are 
in store for them. Some workmen repairing the Quay-head, 
at Great Yarmouth, observed a nice turbot swimming along 
by the water’s edge, and inspecting their progress. They 
quietly got between him and the deep water, and hoisted 
him out with their hands upon the Quay itself. I saw him 
while still living, and had the pleasure to dine off him 
next day. Oysters fatten the faster for being subject to a 
slight influence of waters from the land. At Stitfkey, in 
Norfolk, celebrated for mussels, the best are the sluice 
mussels. These are marine things, enjoying, for a time at 
least, a degree of saltness below “ ocean point.” Above it, 
are the creatures that swim unhurt in that distasteful 
mixture, the Dead Sea, or, still more surprising, in Mr. 
Darwin’s South American brine-ponds. 
It does not appear very clear how it is that most of the 
fish inhabiting fresh-water lakes are killed by the irruption 
of a certain number of barrels from the sea. Salt does not 
combine with living bodies. A man may take ever so many 
dips at Brighton, without being converted into pickled 
pork. There is nothing structural visible to the eye, why 
salt water should be fatal to one fish, and indispensible to 
another; any more than there is, among plants, why a 
night’s frost, which leaves one species untouched, should 
burn or dissolve another. The sea-worm which our 
Mundesley fishermen dig from their sands at ebb tide, for 
bait, is certainly larger, but loo/ts as tender-skinned as its 
first cousin, the common earth-worm, to which, a few drops 
from the sea are an immediate sentence of death. Many 
marine-worms are more fragile and thin-skinned than the 
medicinal leech, on which the severe effects of salt are so 
familiar. How delicate is the cuticle of the expanded sea- 
anemone ! The cause of death cannot be the different 
quantity of oxygen held in combination by sea and river 
water. One can only guess that solutions of salt act on the 
gills and tender surface of certain creatures, as they do on 
a raw wound with us, by painfully affecting the nerves ; and 
that the animal is destroyed by the sudden shock and the 
over-head-and-ears plunge into suffering thus inflicted; 
while in others, the same organs are protected or rendered 
insensible, as our cuticle protects our flesh. But this notion 
leaves unexplained why most salt-water fish die on removal 
into fresh water. D. 
(To be continued.) 
THE MERITS OF COCHIN-CHINA FOWLS. 
So much has been said about that fashionable subject, 
the Cochin-China Fowl, and I have said so much myself, 
that I had made a resolution to revert to it no more, at any 
rate for the present. I cannot help, however, offering my j 
concurrence in Mr. Wingfield’s account of the merits of | 
these useful birds, and their capabilities as the poor-man’s 
stock. That gentleman’s knowledge, of what we all | 
(“Gallus" included) agree in appreciating—the square- I 
built, short-legged variety—is so full and so practical, that 
my opinion, in addition to his, may seem superfluous ; but 
“ Gallus’s ” crow, although not defiant, must have a cackle 
in reply. 
In spite of their present high price, in spite of %ie pre¬ 
judice which at present exists against them, as fowls for the 
table, and the quantity of corn they are accused of con¬ 
suming, I do most decidedly believe the Cochin-China to be 
the best fowl for the poor man and the farmer; considering 
them, as I once before had occasion to remark, not as fancy, 
but only as productive stock. 
I am sorry I have never kept account of the eggs la d by 
my nine hens, for the supply from them has been most 
