They also use their spines with such fatal effect that, incredible as it may appear, I have seen one during a battle absolutely rip his opponent open, so that he sank to the bottom and died. I have occasionally known three or four parts of the tub taken possession of by as many other little tyrants, who guard their territories with the strictest vigilance, and the slightest invasion invariably brings on a battle.'-ib., pp. 77, 78. To us, Such is their idea of domestic peace. Happy is the man to whose lot it never fell to live with a human stickleback. we confess, the account has the force of a moral allegory. The mackerel, that beautiful and delicious fish, in whose sole favour the fourth commandment is by inviolable prescription suspended,* Was supposed by Anderson, Duhamel, and others, to be a fish of passage; performing, like some birds, certain periodical migrations, and making long voyages from north to south at one season of the year, and the reverse at another. It does not appear to have been sufficiently considered, that inhabiting a medium which varied little either in its temperature or productions, locally, fishes are removed beyond the influence of the two principal causes which make a temporary change of situation necessary. Independently of the difficulty of tracing the course pursued through so vast an expanse of water, the order of the appearance of the fish at different places of the shores of the temperate and southern parts of Europe, is the reverse of that which, according to their theory ought to have happened. It is known that this fish is now taken even on some parts of our own coast, in every month of the year. It is probable that the mackerel inhabit almost the whole of the European seas; and the law of nature which obliges them and many others to visit the shallower waters of the shores at a particular season, appears to be one of those wise and bountiful provisions of the Creator, by which not only is the species perpetuated with the greatest certainty, but a large portion of the parent animals are thus brought within the reach of man; who, but for the action of this law, would be deprived of many of those species most valuable to him as food. For the mackerel dispersed over the immense surface of the deep, no effective fishery could be carried on; but, approaching the shore as they do from all directions, and moving along the coast collected in immense shoals, millions are caught, which yet form but a very small portion compared to the myriads that escape.'-ib., pp. 121, 122. As an article of food, transported inland, cooked with various * Mackerel, on account of their liability to spoil, have been allowed to be cried on the Sabbath, ever since the close of the seventeenth century. arts, and, as is most likely, its native flavour obscured by graveolent fennel, the mackerel cannot vindicate his true rank amongst the res saporatæ. Chosen from the fisher's boat, for the brightness of his colours, more than for his size, let the minutes be few before he is stretched, divided down the back, and duly cleansed, but not by ablusion, over the clear sharp heat of wood embers. Let not the Erycthoë of your meal spare the dredging box, lest the tender fibres be torrified into unsavoury hardness. He is ready when the back bone will lift from the meat.-There are flavours, which, like the hues of the dolphin, do but briefly outlast the life; and, reader, the learned shall give thee reasons for it. The branchiæ or gills of fishes possess complex powers, and are capable of receiving the influence of oxygen not only from that portion of atmospheric air which is mixed with the water, but also directly from the atmosphere itself. When fishes confined in a limited quantity of water are prevented by any mechanical contrivance from taking in atmospheric air at the surface, they die much sooner than others that are permitted to do so. The consumption of oxygen, however, is small; and the temperature of the body of fishes that swim near the bottom, and are known to possess but a low degree of 'respiration, is seldom more than two or three degrees higher than the temperature of the water at its surface. Dr. John Davy, however, in a paper read before the Royal Society of London, in 1835, on the temperature of some fishes allied to mackerel, all of which are surface swimmers, with a higher degree of respiration, observed that the bonito had a tempera ture of 90° Fahr. when the surrounding medium was 80° 5′; and that it therefore constitutes an exception to the generally received rule that fishes are universally cold-blooded. Physiologists have shown that the quantity of respiration is inversely as the degree of muscular irrit ability. It may be considered as a law, that those fish which swim near the surface of the water have a high standard of respiration, a low degree of muscular irritability, great necessity for oxygen, die soon, almost immediately when taken out of the water, and have flesh prone to rapid decomposition. Mackerel, salmon, trout, and herrings, are examples.' The mackerel fishery is occasionally very profitable to those engaged in it. ، In May, 1807, the first Brighton boat-load sold 'at Billingsgate for forty guineas per hundred. The success of 'the fishery in 1821 was beyond all precedent. The value of the ، catch of sixteen boats from Lowestoffe, on the 30th of June, amounted to £5252; and it is supposed that was no less an amount than £14,000 altogether realized by the owners and 'men concerned in the fishery of the Suffolk coast.' The pike, the shark of our streams and ponds, is the longest lived, and the most likely to attain the largest size, of any freshwater fish. Pennant refers to one that was ninety years old; but Gesner relates that, in 1497, a pike was taken at Hailbrun, in Suabia, with a brazen ring attached to it, on which were these words in Greek characters: 'I am the fish which was put into this lake by the hands of the Governor of the Universe, Frederick II., the 5th of October, 1230. This fish was therefore 267 years old, and was said to have weighed 350 pounds. The skeleton, nineteen feet in length, was long preserved at Manheim, as a great curiosity in natural history. The lakes of Scotland have produced pike of fifty-five pounds weight; and some of the Irish lakes are said to have afforded pike of seventy pounds but it is observed, says honest Isaac Walton, that such old or very great pikes have in them more of state than goodness; the smaller or middle-sized pikes, being, by the most and choicest palates, observed to be the best meat.'' Walton was himself sufficient authority in such matters. We recommend those house-wives who are careful about serving' to consult him on the mode of roasting the pike. The result is a dish too good for any but anglers and very honest men.' And so The trout of the Stour, at Fordwich, near Canterbury, is the most esteemed. This is the salmon-trout. Isaac Walton says of it that it is thought to eat nothing in fresh water; and it may 'be better believed, because it is well known, that swallows, and 'bats, and wagtails, have been found, many thousands at a time in 'hollow trees, or clay caves, where they have been observed to live and sleep out the whole winter, without meat. 'much for these Fordwich trout, which never afford an angler 'sport; but either live their time of being in the fresh water, by their meat formerly gotten in the sea, (not unlike the swallow or frog) or by virtue of the fresh water only, or as the birds of · Paradise and the chameleon are said to live, by the sun and air.' There is a better reason now why they afford the angler no sport. The water is farmed, and the fish taken solely by nets. Trout fishing was apparently Walton's favourite sport. He dilates on it with even more than his usual unction. The pleasant episode of Maudlin, and her Mother the Milk-woman, occurs in his instructions to Venator on the art of taking this fish. We have been convinced, by experience, that every body does not, though every body should, turn the pages of his Complete Angler. The effect may occasionally be a short-lived passion for the blameless sport;' but Walton has small hopes of such a pupil! This calm, quiet, innocent recreation,' is provided only for those who have a native fitness to it, as he believes. But it is possible to enjoy the country, to respond to Virgil's 'flumina amem inglorius,' without the embarrassing equipment of an angler-and he is rich who can prize such cheap delights. Nothing is more adapted to foster these simple and purifying tastes than the perusal of his book ; VOL. II. 2 s (Whose pen the mysteries of rod and line To reverend watching of each still report Here is a page of poetry. But turn out of the way a little, 'good scholar! toward yonder high honey-suckle hedge; there 'we'll sit and sing, whilst this shower falls so gently upon the 'teeming earth, and gives yet a sweeter smell to the lovely 'flowers that adorn these verdant meadows. Look! under that 'broad beech-tree I sat down when I was last this way a-fishing. And the birds in the adjoining grove seemed to have a friendly 'contention with an echo, whose dead voice seemed to live in a 'hollow tree near to the brow of that primrose hill. There I sat, viewing the silver streams glide silently toward their centre the tempestuous sea; yet, sometimes opposed by rugged roots and 'pebble-stones, which broke their waves and turned them into "foam. And sometimes I beguiled the time by viewing the 'harmless lambs; some leaping securely in the cool shade, whilst 'others sported themselves in the cheerful sun; and saw others craving comfort from the swollen udders of their bleating dams. As I sat thus, these and other sights had so fully possessed my 'soul with content, that I thought as the poet has happily ex'pressed it, 'I was for that time lifted above earth; And possessed joys not promised in my birth.' We are tempted to transcribe the stanzas in which Walton presents the very spirit of his Angler.' 6 Or with my Bryan and a book, And angle on; and beg to have A quiet passage to a welcome grave.' He who can echo this wish, though it need not be literally, is already lifted above the sphere of a host of petty and debasing solicitudes. His pleasures, so far as they are not social, are in his own power. Self-supplied, he needs not to join the mendicant throng which beset the avenues of amusements rather worse than idle, and support a literature rather worse than frivolous.. Science has decided against the fifteenth printed rule of the Lord Mayor's Court of Conservation, that no person shall take the fish usually called white-bait; it appearing to this court that, under pretence of taking white-bait, the small fry of various 'species of fish are destroyed.' Mr. Yarrell's papers in the Zoological Journal determined their species as distinct; and we suppose they are now eaten with a gusto qualified by no twinge of remorse. Yet, while this dainty dish could only be procured under a liability of pains and penalties, it is pleasing to reflect upon the readiness of Lord Mayors and Aldermen, to afford, by their example, a practical excuse for the prohibited custom. The white-bait (Clupea Alba) is taken in the following man ner: ८ The mouth of the net is by no means large, measuring only three feet square in extent; but the mesh of the hose, or bag end of the net, is very small. The boat is moored in the tide way, where the water is from twenty to thirty feet deep; and the net, with its wooden framework, is fixed to the side of the boat. The tail of the hose is from time to time handed into the boat, the end untied, and the contents shaken out. The wooden frame forming the mouth of the net does not dip more than four feet below the surface of the water; and except an occasional straggling fish, the only small fry taken with the white-bait are the various species of sticklebacks, and the very common spotted goby, neither of which are of sufficient value and importance to require protection.'-Vol. II., pp. 128, 129. The only river besides the Thames from which Mr. Yarrell has received specimens, is the Hamble, which runs into Southampton water. But this he believes to be owing rather 'to the want of a particular mode of fishing by which so small a 'fish can be taken so near the surface, than to the absence of the |