fishes is so great, as to overturn the systems that have attempted to account for it on those principles; that by some power in the stomach yet unknown, which from all kinds of artificial maceration acts differently, the meat taken into the Maw, is often seen, altho' nearly digested, still to retain its original form, and whilst ready for a total dissolution, appears to the Eye, as yet untouched by the force of the stomach.

The power of fishes to sustain themselves upon a given quantity of food, seems to accommodate itself to the quantity of aliment with which they are supplied. A Pike, sparingly fed, can be habituated to subsist on very little aliment; if fully dieted, it acquires the power of devouring an hundred Roaches in three days. Exceptions are produced by Naturalists, to the extraordinary voraciousness of fishes, but if thoroughly examined, they will perhaps be found more apparent than real. Some are said to subsist on pure water alone; the Element of water, however, is seldom found unmixed; the very epithets usually applied to it of salt, bitter, sweet, imply a composition perceptible even to the taste; the particles of the Earth upon which it runs, necessarily enter into it and vitiate its purity; these substances, together with myriads of animalcules with which it teem, may for a while afford a scanty subsistence, and sustain the being of the most hungry animals. Of the Economy of Nature, we are, in fact, only capable of observing a few of the visible effects, and the Phenomena resulting from them in certain circumstances: we cannot prove that fishes may not be naturally endowed with the faculty of converting unorganized matter, that may at this moment subsist under a fluid form, into solid animal substances. We are certain that a Leech may be long preserved healthy in common water, will increase in size, and be capable of exercising all its animal functions in that state. It would be hard to deny that the Leech had in this instance derived nourishment from the fluid alone in which it lives, though it is well known, that the Leech greedily sucks up another fluid of animal origin, when it can have access to that, from which we cannot doubt, but it receives nourishment; from this may be inferred, that fishes in general can

obtain sustenance from pure water, in the same manner as terrestrial animals derive it from vegetables, and though in both cases, there may be some kinds which cannot be at all subsisted upon this original pabulum in its native state, yet this pabulum must be considered as constituting either directly or indirectly the food of the whole; so that the flesh of all terrestrial animals may be considered as being produced from vegetable matter, changed by the animal process into its present state. In like manner, the flesh of all fishes may be deemed to be water (or some diaphanous matter administered through the medium of water) converted by the animal economy into the flesh of fishes ; and vegetable substances also, from something administered to them in a similar way, through the medium of water, may be held to derive their nourishment.

Supposing then that fishes, perhaps of every sort, procure some part of their sustenance from water, yet of all known to Man as an article of food, not one it is conceived subsists so entirely on water as the Herring, and there is little reason to doubt, but that Herrings extract their subsistence from water, nearly as much as vegetables in general do. The Herring is always found in shoals, and on some occasions they are crowded so close together, as to fill the Sea, at least so far as our implements can reach from top to bottom. Ships are said to have been retarded in their course in passing through these shoals, and instances are recorded where these little fishes have been left by the ebbing of the tide in heaps three feet deep upon the shores for many miles in extent. It is universally credited among those conversant in the herring fishery, that no other fish will go into the middle of a shoal. The Whale, to whom they are a favourite repast, and who swallows a thousand at once, never ventures into the shoal, but hovers about the skirts of it, and regularly follows their course. The Dogfish, which in vast troops assiduously attend the herrings wherever they go, carefully keep aloof from the great Mass of them; so it is with other fishes, who delight in the herring as a prey, but as a body, scem to dread their multitudes. That Herrings obtain their subsistence

directly from Water, in which they swim, seems confirmed by many facts respecting the habits of that singular and celebrated fish. Altho' ever swimming in Shoals, unlike any other Phenomenon in Nature with which Man is acquainted, unless it be those destructive swarms of Locusts, which, in certain regions, have been sometimes known so to fill the Air as to obscure the light of the Sun, and cover with their bodies every terrestrial object they met with in their course; yet, no other resemblance can be found between the Shoals of Herrings and the Locusts, but their numbers. These Insects proceed in their career evidently in search of food alone; the foremost of this pestiferous throng seize upon the first vegetables that come in their way and devour them, leaving those that follow to die with hunger. Their course is marked by destruction; nothing is left behind to support animal existence. Should the wind shift so as to cause their return in the same track through which they came, their subsistence being exhausted, they all perish. They are therefore constantly progressive, for to rest in one place for a few days, or to retrace their former path, are to them alike inevitably destructive; not so with the Herrings. With rapidity, and sometimes slowly they advance, at times recede, and again resume their former course, and often remain stationary for months. Nor are these motions apparently influenced by the nature of their aliment; nor have any symptoms ever been discovered that in consequence of their long continuance in one place, their food has. been diminished. With their fatness, or the reverse, no circumstance in their migrations has been ever observed to have the smallest connexion. When they are in progress, let it be continued ever so long, the foremost tishes in the shoal have never been found to be in better condition, than those in the rear, which, had they fed on small fry, or drawn their subsistence from any other solid substances that floated on the water, must have been the case; nor has it been observed, that they generally become leaner after a long continuance in one spot, which, had solid substances been their nutriment, must have been quickly devoured; so that no known fact gives the smallest indication that ever the quantity of food has been in any

respect consumed, or even lessened, by the numbers or long abode of this fish in one station. This reasoning is strongly confirmed, by the condition, when examined, of the body of the Herring; whenever one has been caught, or under whatever circumstances it has been killed, if it be fat and in good health, nothing is ever found in its stomach, that gives the smallest token that it was either of vegetable or animal origin. The only contents of the stomach is a very small quantity of a mucous matter, sui generis, and that has no known parallel; all these facts seem to decide, that the Herring is capable of drawing its subsistence from the water itself, by an inherent power of its animal functions, in converting sea water, or the particles of which it consists, into its own sustenance, and which nutrimental matter it always finds in plenty, wherever that water is; thus deriving its nourishment directly from water, in a mode nearly similar to that in which vegetables obtain their subsistence from the same Element in the soil where they are planted.

Returning from this peculiar instance of the Herring, it may however be conceded, that other fishes, altho' for ever prowling, can endure hunger for a long period. A Pike, one of the most gluttonous of fishes, will live and even thrive in a pond where there is no inhabitant but itself; and the Gold and Silver fishes which are confined in glass Vases, subsist, frequently for years, without any visible support but Water; it would appear therefore, that in certain situations, fishes are as remarkable for their Abstinence, as in others they are distinguished for their voracity; and that Nature in compassion to the want which they must often suffer, has indulged them with a power of accommodating their appetite to scarcity, as well as to abundance of food.

An Opinion has been formed concerning the spontaneous production of fishes. It is a Phenomenon in Nature, for which it is indeed difficult to account; yet it is notwithstanding an incontrovertible fact, that in stagnating pools, occasioned by the rain in Bombay, which have no communication with any river or the Sea, fishes are generated,

of which many persons have eaten, and which upon the drying of these ponds die and are corrupted. In whatever manner the fishes were introduced into these pools, we must conclude, that they were originally produced from the eggs of animals of their own kind; because the idea of spontaneous generation is repugnant to every maxim of sound Philosophy.

Fishes in general, are Male and Female; the former possessing the Milt and the latter the Roe, altho' some individuals of the Cod and Sturgeon are said to contain both. The Spawn of the greater number of fishes, is deposited in the sand or gravel; and in that state, it is probable that the Roe and Milt are mixed together. A fish whose weight, at twenty years old, shall be thirty pounds, generates the first or second year, when perhaps it does not weigh more than half a pound; and it is certain that the Male seems more attached to the Eggs than the Female, for when she ceases to drop them, the Male instantly abandons her, and with ardour follows the Eggs which are carried down by the Stream, or dispersed amongst the Waves by the Wind, passing and repassing many times over every spot where he finds the Eggs.

Summer is the usual spawning time, because at that season the water is tepified by the beams of the Sun, and for quickening the Eggs into life, is therefore better adapted. How the Eggs of fishes are impregnated is wholly unknown. All that obviously offers is, that in ponds, the sexes are often seen together among the long grass at the edge of the water; that there they seem to struggle, and are in a state of suffering, as they grow thin, lose their appetite, whilst their flesh becomes flabby, and in some, the scales grow rough and lose their lustre; on the contrary, when the time of coupling is over, their appetite returns, their natural agility is resumed, and their scales become brilliant and beautiful. The Spawn continues in the state of Eggs a longer or a shorter period, but this is for the most part proportioned to the size of the animal. The young animal remains in the