FISH ARTIFICIALLY FATTENED INFERIOR. 
121 
contrary, angles to-day that lie may dine to-morrow; he takes 
and dries millions of fish on the banks of Newfoundland, that 
the fervent Catholic of the shores of the Mediterranean may 
have wherewithal to satisfy the cravings of the stomach during 
next year’s Lent, without imperilling his soul by violating the 
discipline of the papal church ; and. all the arrangements of 
his fisheries are so organized as to involve the destruction of 
many more fish than are secured for human use, and the loss 
of a large proportion of the annual harvest of the sea in the 
process of curing, or in transportation to the places of its 
consumption.* 
Fish are more affected than quadrupeds by slight and even 
imperceptible differences in their breeding places and feeding 
grounds. Every river, every brook, every lake stamps a spe¬ 
cial character upon its salmon, its shad, and its trout, which is 
at once recognized by those who deal in or consume them. 
No skill can give the fish fattened by food selected and pre¬ 
pared by man the flavor of those which are nourished at the 
table of nature, and the trout of the artificial ponds in Ger¬ 
many and Switzerland are so inferior to the brook fish of the 
same species and climate, that it is hard to believe them iden¬ 
tical. The superior sapidity of the American trout to the 
* The indiscriminate hostility of man to inferior forms of animated life 
is little creditable to modern civilization, and it is painful to reflect that it 
becomes keener and more unsparing in proportion to the refinement of the 
race. The savage slays no animal, not even the rattlesnake, wantonly; 
and the Turk, whom we call a barbarian, treats the dumb beast as gently 
as a child. One cannot live many weeks in Turkey without witnessing 
touching instances of the kindness of the people to the lower animals, and 
I have found it very difficult to induce even the boys to catch lizards and 
other reptiles for preservation as specimens. 
The fearless confidence in man, so generally manifested by wild animals 
in newly discovered islands, ought to have inspired a gentler treatment of 
them; but a very few years of the relentless pursuit, to which they are 
immediately subjected, suffice to make them as timid as the wildest inhab¬ 
itants of the European forest. This timidity, however, may easily be over¬ 
come. The squirrels introduced by Mayor Smith into the public parks of 
Boston are so tame as to feed from the hands of passengers, and they not 
unfrequently enter the neighboring houses. 
