to any of the species in particular, how little can be said of their habits, their stations, or method of propagation.

Much, indeed, can be said of them, if considered relatively to man; and large books have been written of the manner of taking fish, or of dressing them. Apicius is noted for having first taught mankind to suffocate fish in Carthaginian pickle; and Quin for giving a sauce to the John-dory: Mrs. Glasse is famous for her eel-pie; and Mr. Tull for his invention of spaying carp to give it a finer flavour. In this manner our cooks handle the subject. On the other hand, our physicians assure us that the flesh of fishes yields little nourishment, and soon corrupts; that it abounds in a gross sort of oil and water, and hath but few volatile particles, which renders it less fit to be converted into the substance of our bodies. They are cold and moist, and must needs, say they, produce juices of the same kind, and consequently are improper to strengthen the body. In this diversity of opinion, it is the wisest way to eat our fish in the ordinary manner, and pay no great attention to cooks or doctors.

I cannot conclude this chapter without putting a question to the learned, which, I confess, I am not able to resolve. How comes it that fish, which are bred in a salt element, have yet no salt to the taste, or that is capable of being extracted from it ?*

[* Though fishes live in a salt element, they do not subsist on it. All the water they take into their mouths is again discharged through the gills, after retaining the air contained in it for the purposes of life. The medium of water answers the precise purpose to fishes, that the medium of air does to man and other land animals. In inspiration the element is received into

CHAP. II.

Of Cetaceous Fishes in general.

As on land there are some orders of animals that seem formed to command the rest, with greater powers and more various instincts, so in the ocean there are fishes which seem formed upon a nobler plan than others, and that, to their fishy form, join the appetites and the conformation of quadrupeds. These are all of the cetaceous kind; and so much raised above their fellows of the deep, in their appetites and instincts, that almost all our modern naturalists have fairly excluded them from the finny tribes, and will have them called, not fishes, but great beasts of the ocean. With them it would be ás improper to say men go to Greenland fishing for whale, as it would be to say

the lungs or gills, and in expiration is returned deprived of its purer parts, which are retained for the purpose of animal economy. Fishes confined in a closed vessel will gradually pine away, and gasp for want of the air contained in fresh water, in the same manner as land-animals, deprived of the access to atmospheric air, will gasp and perish for want of the purer parts contained in it. The food of fishes is not water, for none of it gets into the stomach, but insects, worms, marine substances of all kinds, and the spawn and lesser animals of their own kind. And whatever salt may be taken with these substances into the stomach, is decomposed and separated into its component parts of acid and soda. The sailor that feeds for twelve months together on salted meats, has not his own flesh made salt; but a decomposition taking place during the process of digestion, he becomes corrupted and scorbutic by the excess of soda and magnesia.]

that a sportsman goes to Blackwall a fowling for mackarel.

Yet, notwithstanding philosophers, mankind will always have their own way of talking; and, for my own part, I think them here in the right. A different formation of the lungs, stomach, and intestines, a different manner of breathing or propagating, are not sufficient to counterbalance the great obvious analogy which these animals bear to the whole finny tribe. They are shaped as other fishes; they swim with fins; they are entirely naked, without hair; they live in the water, though they come up to breathe; they are only seen in the depths of the ocean, and never come upon shore but when forced thither. These sure are sufficient to plead in favour of the general denomination, and acquit mankind of error in ranking them with their lower companions of the deep.

But still they are as many degrees raised above other fishes in their nature, as they are in general in their size. This tribe is composed of the Whale and its varieties, of the Cachalot, the Dolphin, the Grampus, and the Porpoise. All these resemble quadrupeds in their internal structure, and in some of their appetites and affections. Like quadrupeds, they have lungs, a midriff, a stomach, intestines, liver, spleen, bladder, and parts of generation; their heart also resembles that of quadrupeds, with its partitions closed up as in them, and driving red and warm blood in circulation through the body. In short, every internal part bears a most striking similitude; and to keep these parts warm, the whole kind are also covered between the skin and the muscles with a thick coat of fat or blubber,

which, like the bacon-fat of a hog, keeps out the cold, renders their muscles glib and pliant, and probably makes them lighter in swimming.

As these animals breathe the air, it is obvious that they cannot bear to be any long time under water. They are constrained, therefore, every two or three minutes to come up to the surface to take breath, as well as to spout out through their nostril, for they have but one, that water which they sucked in while gaping for their prey. This conduit by which they breathe, and also throw out the water, is placed in the head, a little before the brain. Though externally the hole is but single, it is internally divided by a bony partition, which is closed by a sphincter muscle on the inside, that, like the mouth of a purse, shuts it up at the pleasure of the animal. There is also another muscle or valve, which prevents the water from going down the gullet. When therefore the animal takes in a certain quantity of water, which is necessary to be discharged and separated from its food, it shuts the mouth, closes the valve of the stomach, opens the sphincter that kept the nostril closed, and then breathing strongly from the lungs, pushes the water out by the effort, as we see it rise by the pressure of air in a fire-engine.

The senses of these animals seem also superior to those of other fishes. The eyes of other fishes, we have observed, are covered only with that transparent skin that covers the rest of the head; but in all the cetaceous kinds, it is covered by eyelids, as in man. This, no doubt, keeps that organ in a more perfect state, by giving it intervals of relaxation, in which all vision is suspended. The

other fishes, that are for ever staring, must see, if for no other reason, more feebly, as their sight are always exerted.

organs of

As for hearing, these also are furnished with the internal instruments of the ear, although the external orifice no where appears. It is most probable that this orifice may open by some canal, resembling the Eustachian tube, into the mouth; but this has not as yet been discovered.

Yet Nature sure has not thus formed a complete apparatus for hearing, and denied the animal the use of it when formed. It is most likely that all animals of the cetaceous kind can hear, as they certainly utter sounds, and bellow to each other. This vocal power would be as needless to animals naturally deaf, as glasses to a man that was blind.

But it is in the circumstances in which they continue their kind, that these animals show an eminent superiority. Other fish deposit their spawn, and leave the success to accident: these never produce above one young, or two at the most; and this the female suckles entirely in the manner of quadrupeds, her breasts being placed, as in the human kind, above the navel. We have read many fabulous accounts of the nursing of the demi-gods of antiquity, of their feeding on the marrow of lions, and their being suckled by wolves; one might imagine a still more heroic system of nutrition, if we supposed that the young hero was suckled and grew strong upon the breast-milk of a she-whale.

The whale or the grampus are terrible at any time; but are fierce and desperate in the defence of their young. In Waller's beautiful poem of