During a whole season which I spent on the banks of Gironde I saw them cast ashore to perish miserably by hundreds. On their arrival they were white and brilliant as crystal. Alas! How different was their aspect in the course of a couple of days. Very happily they sank beneath the sand and were lost to my pitying view.
They are the food of every thing marine, and have themselves scarce any aliment, none that we know of, but the, as yet, scarce organized atoms floating in the sea which they, etherialize, as we may say, and suck in without making them suffer. They have neither teeth nor weapons; no defence, excepting that some species, Forbes says not all, can secrete, when attacked, a liquid which stings somewhat like the nettle, but so faintly that Dicquemare with impunity received some of it in his eye.
Here we have, indeed, a creature little provided and in great peril. She is superior already; she has senses, and, if we may judge from her contractions, a great sensibility to suffering. She cannot, like the Polypus, be divided and live. Divide him and you double his existence; divide her and she dies. Gelatinous as the polypus, the Medusa seems to be an embryon cast away too soon from the bosom of the common mother, tornfrom the solid base and the association to which the Polypus owes his safety, and launched into adventure. How has the imprudent creature set out? How, without sails, or oars, or helm, has she left her port? What is her point of departure?
Ellis, as long ago as 1750, saw a little Medusa produced from the campanular polypus, and many later observers have ascertained that she is a kind of polypus that has left the society. To speak more simply, she is an escaped polypus.
And the learned M. Forbes who has so deeply studied them, very aptly asks, what is there astonishing in that? It only shows that to that extent the animal still obeys the vegetable law. From the tree, the collective being, proceeds the individual, the detached fruit which fruit will make another tree. A pear tree is a sort of vegetable polypus of which the pear, (the emancipated individual) can give us a pear tree.
In like manner, adds Forbes, as the leaf laden tree, stops in its development, contracts, and becomes an organ of love—i. e. a flower, thePolypier, contracting some of its polypes and transforming their contractions, forms the placenta, the eggs from which proceeds the young and graceful Medusa.
One would guess as much from her hesitating grace, that weakness at once so unarmed and so fearless, which embarks without instruments of navigation, andtrusts too much to life. It is the first tender and touching adventure of the new soul going forth without defence from the security of the common life, to be itself, an individual acting and suffering on its own account—soft sketch of free nature; an embryon of liberty.
To be oneself, oneself alone, in a little complete world, was a great temptation for all. A universal seduction! a beautiful folly, which causes all the effort and all the progress of the world, from our earth upward to the very stars. But in her first attempts the Medusa, seems especially unjustified. One would say that she was created on purpose to be drowned. Laden above, and ill-ballasted below, she is formed in conditions exactly opposite to those of her parent, the Physalie. This latter displays on the surface of the water, only a little balloon, an insubmersible membrane and below has infinitely long tentaculæ, of twenty feet or more, which steady her, sweep the waters, stupefy the fish, make prey of him. Light and careless, inflating her pearly balloon of blue or purple tints, she darts from her long hairy tentaculæ a subtle and murderous poison. Less formidable, the Velelles are no less secure. They have the form ofradeaux, their minute organization is already somewhat solid, and they can steer and trim their oblique sail to every wind. The Porpites, that seem to be only a flower, a sea Margaret,have their own peculiar levity; even after death, they continue to float. It is the same with many other fantastic and almost aërial beings, garlands with golden bells or with rosebuds—such as the Physopheres, Stephanomie, &c., azure girdles of Venus. All these swim and float invincibly, fear only the shore, and sail boldly out on the open sea, and when it is ever so rough are perfectly safe there. So little do the Porpites and Velelles fear the sea, that, being able to rise at pleasure, they exert themselves to sink to the concealing depths when the weather is bad.
Not such is our poor Medusa. Fearing the shore, she is also in danger at sea. She could sink into the depths at will, but the watery abyss is forbidden to her; she can live only on the surface, in the broad light and in full peril. She sees, she hears, and her sense of touch is very delicate, to her misfortune, too much so. She cannot guide herself; her most complicated organs overload and overbalance her.
And so we are tempted to believe that she must needs repent of so perilous a search after liberty; and desires to be back in the inferior state, the security of the common life. The polypier made the Medusa, she in turn makes the polypier, and returns to the life of community. But this vegetating state wearies her, and in the next generation she again emancipates herself and goes forth again to the perils of her vain navigation.Strange alternation, in which she floats incessantly; moving, she dreams of repose; in rest, she sighs for movement.
These strange metamorphoses, which by turns raise and abase the undecided creature, keeping her alternating between two lives so different, are apparently the case of the inferior species, of the Medusa which have not been able to enter decidedly into the irrevocable career of emancipation. For the others, we can easily suppose that their charming varieties mark the interior progress of life, the degrees of development, the sports, the smiling graces of their new liberty. This latter class, admirably artistic, won this so simple theme of a disk or parasol which floats, of a light lustre of crystal which reflects the sun's glowing and coloring lights, has made an infinity of variations, a deluge of little marvels.
All these beauties floating on the green mirror of the sea in their gay and delicate colors, and in the thousand attractions of an infantine and unconscious coquetry, have puzzled Science, which to class and to name them, has been obliged to call to its aid both the Queens of History and the Goddesses of Mythology. Here we have the waving Berenice, whose rich hair floats another and brighter flood upon the flood; there we have the little Orithya, the fair spouse of Eölus, who, at the breathing of her husband, displays her pure, white urn, uncertain, and scarcely supported by her finehair, which she often entangles beneath, or the weeping Dionea, looking like an alabaster cup, from which, in crystalline streamlets, flow splendid tears. Such, when in Switzerland, I saw spreading themselves the wearied and idle cascades, which, having made too many turnings, seemed dropping with drowsiness and languor.
In the great faëry of the illumination of the sea on stormy nights, the Medusa has her separate part. Bathed, like so many other beings, in the phosphoric fluid with which they are all penetrated, she returns it in her manner, with a peculiar charm.
How dark is the night at sea when we do not see that phosphoric gleam or a fitful flashing! How vast and formidable are those dark depths, on such gloomy nights. On land, the shadows are less dense and impenetrable, we see, if dimly, and make out forms, if imperfectly, so that we get so many directing marks. But at sea, how vast, unbroken, infinitely dense is the darkness of the dark nights. Nothing, still nothing; a thousand dangers to be imagined, but not one to be seen and avoided!
We feel all this, even when living on the coast. It is a great gladness, an exciting pleasure, when, the air becoming electric, we see in the distance, a slight line of pale fire. What is it? We see it even at home, on the dead fish, the Herring, for instance. But, living in his great sea, he is still more luminous in the long trainsthat he leaves behind him. That phosphoric brilliancy is by no means the exclusive privilege of Death. Is it an effect of Heat? No, for you find it at both poles, in the Antarctic Seas, in the Siberian Seas, in ours—in all.
It is the common electricity which the half-living waters throw off in stormy weather; the innocent and pacific lightning of which all marine creatures are then so many conductors. They inhale it, and they exhale it, and they restore it largely when they die. The sea gives it, and the sea takes it back again. Along the coasts and in the straits, the currents and the collisions, cause it to circulate the more powerfully, and each creature, according to its waters, takes more or less of it. Here, immense surfaces of peaceable infusoriæ appear, like a milky sea, of a mild, white light, which, when more animated, turns to the yellow of burning sulphur; there their conical lights pirouette upon their own bases, or roll in red balls. A great disc of fire (Pyrosome) commences with an opaline yellow, becomes for a moment greenish, then bursts into red and orange, and at last darkens down into blue. These changes occur with an approach to regularity that would indicate a natural function, the contraction and dilatation of some vast creature, breathing fire.
Then on the horizon, fiery serpents writhe and glide along an immense length—sometimes to the extent oftwenty-five or thirty leagues. The Biphores and the Salpas, transparent alike to sea and sulphur, are the performers in this serpentine spectacle, an astonishing company which disport themselves in this frantic dance, and then separate. Separated, its free members produce free little ones, which, in their turn light up the horizon with their dancing and wild lights. Great fleets, more peaceful, float over the waves of lights. The Velelles, at night, light up their little craft. The Beroes are triumphant as flames. None more magical than those of our Medusæ. Is it in part a physical effect like that which gives their serpentine motion to the Salpas, injected with fire? Is it, as others think, and as some observations would lead us to believe, an act of aspiration? Is it a caprice, as with so many beings that throw out their sparkles and flashes of a vain and inconstant joy? No, the noble and beautiful Medusæ, such as the crowned Oceanique, and the lovely Idonea, seem to express gravest thoughts. Beneath them, their luminous hair, like some sombre watch-light, gives out mysterious lights of emerald and other colors, which, now flashing, anon growing pale, reveal a sentiment, and, I know not what of mystery; suggesting to us the spirit of the abyss, meditating its secrets; the soul that exists, or is to exist some day. Or should it not rather suggest to us some melancholy dream of an impossible destiny which is never to attain its end?Or an appeal to that rapture of love which alone consoles us here below?
We know that on land our fire flies, by their fire give the signal of the bashful yet eager lover who thus betrays her retreat, and decoys her mate. Have the Medusæ this same sense? We know not; but thus much is certain, that they yield at once their flame and their life. The fecund sap, their generative virtue, escapes and diminishes at every gleam. If we desire the cruel pleasure of redoubling this brilliant faëry, we have only to expose them to warmth. Then they become excited, flash, and become beautiful, oh, so exquisitely beautiful—and then the scene is at an end. Flame, love, and life, all are at an end—all evanish for ever.
CHAPTER VII.
THE STONE PICKER.
When the excellent Doctor Livingstone visited the poor Africans who have so much difficulty in defending themselves against the Lion and the slave merchant, the women, seeing him armed with all the protecting arts of Europe, invoked him as their friend and providence in these touching words—"Give us sleep!"
And such is the prayer which all beings in their own language address to Nature. All desire, and all dream of, security. We cannot doubt of that when we note the ingenious endeavors which are made to obtain it. Those efforts have given birth to the arts. Man has not invented one, which animals had not previously invented, under that strong and abiding instinct, the desire of safety.
They suffer, they fear, they desire to live. We must not assume that creatures little advanced, and as it wereembryonic, have, therefore, but little sensibility. The very contrary is certain. In every embryon, that which first appears, is the nervous system, that is to say, the organ and capacity of feeling and of suffering. Pain is the spur by which the creature is urged to foresight and expedients. Pleasure serves the like purpose, and it is already observable even in those which seem the most cold. It has been observed that the snail, after the painful researches of his love, is singularly happy on meeting again the loved object. Both of them with a touching grace wave their swan-like necks, and bestow upon each other the most lively caresses. Who is it that tells us this? The rigid, the very exact Blainville.
But alas! how largely and how widely is pain distributed! Who has not noted with pity the painful efforts of the shell-less mollusc, as he grovels along on his unguarded belly? Painful but faithful image of a fœtus untimely torn from the mother by some cruel chance, and cast upon the ground naked and defenceless. The poor mollusc thickens and indurates his skin as well as he can, softens the asperities of his road, and renders it slippery. But at every contact with the ragged or pointed stones, his writhings and contractions only too plainly show how great is his sensibility to pain.
Notwithstanding all this, she loves, does that great Soul of Harmony which is the unity of the world; sheloves all beings, and by alternations of pleasure and of pain, instructs them and compels them to ascend. But to ascend, to pass into a superior grade, they must first exhaust all that the lower one can furnish of trials more or less painful, of instinctive art, and of stimulants to invention. They must even have exaggerated their species, perceived its excesses, and, by contrast, be inspired with the craving and the need of an opposite one. Progress is thus made by a kind of oscillation between contrary qualities, which by turns are separated from life, and incarnated with it.
Let us translate these divine things into human language, familiar, indeed, and little worthy of the grandeur of such things, but which will make them understood:
Nature, having long delighted to make, unmake, and remake the Medusæ, thus infinitely varying the theme of infant liberty, smote her forehead one morning, and said—"I have a new and a delicious idea. I forgot to secure the life of the poor creature. It can continue only by the infinity of number, the very excess of its fecundity. I must now have a creature at once better guarded and more prudent. It shall if need be, be timid, even to excess, but above all, it is my will that it shall survive."
These timid creatures, when they appeared, were of a prudence carried to its extremest limits. They shutthemselves in, shunning even the light of day. To save themselves from the rude contact of sharp and ragged stones, they employed the universal means, a glutinous mucus from which they secreted an enveloping tube, which elongated in proportion to the length of their journey. A poor expedient, that, which kept these miners, the Tarets out of the light and out of the free air, and which compelled an enormous expenditure of their substance. Every step cost them enormously; a creature thus ruining itself that it may live, can only vegetate—poor, and incapable of progress.
The next resource was not much better, temporarily to bury themselves, going below the sands at low water, and rising to the flood-tide; the resource of the Solen. A varying life that, fugitive twice a day, and consequently full of anxiety.
Among very inferior creatures a thing as yet obscure, which was in time to change the world, began to appear. The simple sea stars had in their fine rays a certain support, a sort of jointed carpentry, and on the outside some thorns, suckers, which could be thrust forward or withdrawn at will. An animal very humble, but timid and serious, seems to have profited by this coarse specimen. It said, I imagine, to Nature:
"I am quite without ambition. I do not ask for the brilliant gifts of the molluscs; I covet neither pearl nor mother of pearl, much less the brilliant colors, thegorgeous array which would discover and betray me; least of all do I envy your silly medusæ, with the fatal charm of their waving and fiery hair, which serves only to drown them, or give them a helpless prey to fish below or birds above. Oh, mother Nature, I ask but one thing,to be, to exist, to have life; to be one, self concentrated, and without compromising external appendages; to be strongly and solidly built, self centred, and of rounded figure, as that is the figure that is least easily taken hold of. I have but little desire to travel; sometimes to roll from high to low water will suffice me. Fastened to my rock, I will solve the problem which your future favorite, man, will vainly brood over, the problem of safety;the strict exclusion of enemies, and the free admission of friends, especially water, air, and light. I know that to achieve this, I must work hard and work long. Covered with movable thorns, I shall be avoided, I shall live a strictly retired life; and my name shall be oursin, little Bear, or sea hedge-hog."
How superior is that prudent animal to the Polypes, in their own stone, which they make from their own secretion, without hard labor, indeed, but also without affording them any safety; how superior, even to his superiors themselves, I mean to so manymolluscs, who have more various senses, but are destitute of the unity of his vertebral provision, of his persevering labor, andof the skillful tools with which that very labor has provided him.
The great marvel, however, of this poor rolling ball, which we might mistake for a thorny chestnut, is that he is at onceone and multiple,fixed and movable, and consists of two thousand four hundred pieces, which separate at his will and pleasure.
Let us see his history of creation.
It was in a narrow creek of the Sea of Brittany, where there was no soft bed of polypes and of Algæ, such as the sea hedge-hogs of the Indian Sea enjoy, in addition to their exemption from labor. Our Breton, on the contrary, was in presence of great peril and difficulty; like Ulysses, in the Odyssey, who, cast ashore, and anon washed seaward again, endeavored to fasten himself to the rock, with his torn and bleeding fingers. Every ebb and flow of the tide was to our little Ulysses, as bad as a mighty tempest; but his iron will and potent desire made him cling so closely and lovingly to the rock, that he became fastened to it as though the air had been expelled from between them by the cupping glass. At the same time his strong thorns scratched and scratched, and endeavored to get a hold, and one of them subdivided and formed a triple and real anchor of safety in aid of the cupping glass, if this latter should fail to act quite perfectly on a by no means smooth surface.
After he had thus doubly secured himself to his rock, he gradually comprehended that he would be a great gainer if he could form a concavity in it, gradually dig himself out a hole, and thus form himself a snug nest, for the day of sickness or of age. For, in fact, one is not always young and strong. And how pleasant it would be, if, some day, the veteran oursin could relax somewhat of the effort necessitated by this constant holding on, this anchorage by day and night.
So he worked and worked, to make a hollow; it was for dear life that he was working, and you may be sure that he never relaxed. Formed of detached pieces, he worked with five claws, which, always pushing together, united and formed an admirable pick. His pick of five teeth, of the finest enamel, is attached to a frame work, delicate, but very strong, and consisting of forty pieces, which work in a sort of sheath, playing in and out, in the most perfect and regular manner, with an elasticity preventing too violent shocks, and self-repairing, in case of any accident.
Rarely, in the softer stone, which he holds in contempt, but almost always in the solid rock, in the hardest granite, it is that this heroically laborious sculptor goes to work. The harder the rock, the firmer he feels himself secured. And, then, in fact, what does it matter about the length of the task? Time is of no consequence to him, centuries are before him; supposing thathis tools and his life should end to-morrow, another would take his place and continue his work. During their life, they hold but little communication, these hermits; but in death a brotherhood exists, even for them, and the young survivor, who shall find the work half done, will bless the memory of the good workman who has preceded him.
Do not fancy that he strikes, and strikes continually. He has an art, a labor-saving art of his own. When he has well attacked the layers of the rock, and well cleaned it, he tears away the asperities as with little pincers. A work of great patience, and one which requires long intervals, too, in order that the water may aid in doing the work upon the denuded parts. He then proceeds to the second layer, then to the next, and so on till the long, long labor is at length completed.
In this uniform life, however, there are occasional crises, even as in the life of the poor human laborer. The sea retires from certain shores; in the summer, this or that rock becomes quite insupportably hot; and our oursin must have two houses, one for summer, and one for winter. A great event, that, of moving from place to place, for a creature without feet and covered all over with points. M. Cailland had an opportunity of observing the conduct of the creature under those circumstances. The weak and movable scoops which play backward and forward, are by no means insensiblethough he protects them somewhat by covering them with a little soft gelatine. At length he steadies himself on his thorns, as on so many crutches, rolls his Diogenes' tub, and attains his port as he best may. Arrived there, he shuts himself up again, and in the little nest which he almost always finds partly made, he concentrates himself in the enjoyment of his solitary and thrice blessed security. Let a thousand enemies prowl without, let the storm-lashed wave moan or rage, all that is for his pleasure. Let the very rock tremble at the dash of the breakers; he well knows that he has nothing to fear, that it is only his kind nurse that is making all that noise; he is safe in his cradle, and with a glad good night, he sleeps.
CHAPTER VIII.
SHELLS, MOTHER OF PEARL, AND PEARL.
The oursin has carried the genius of defence to its utmost limit. His cuirass, or, preferably, his fortress of pieces, is at once movable and resisting, yet sensitive, retractile, and capable of being repaired in case of accident; this fortress is fast-joined and anchored to the rock, and still farther lodged within a hollow of the rock, so that the enemy has no means of attacking the citadel;—it is a system of defence so perfect that it can never be surpassed. No shell is comparable to it; far less are any of the works of human industry.
The oursin is the completion of the starred and circular creatures; in him they have their highest and most triumphant development. The circle has few variations; it is the absolute form; in the globe of the oursin, at once so simple and so complicated, is the perfection and completion of the first world.
The beauty of the world next to come, will be the harmony of double forms, their equilibrium, the gracefulness of their oscillation. From the molluscs even up to man, every being in this next world is to be made up of two corresponding halves; in every animal is to be found (far better thanunity)Union.
The master piece of the oursin had gone even beyond what was needed; that miracle of defence had made him prisoner; he was not only shut in but buried; he had dug his own grave. His perfection of isolation had banished him, deprived him of all connections, and of all possibility of progress.
To have a regular ascent, we must commence from a very low stage, from the elementary embryon, which at the outset will have no other movement than that of the elements. The new creature is the mere serf of the planet; so completely so, that even in the egg, it turns as the earth turns, with its double turning on its own axis, and the general rotation.
Even when emancipated from the egg, growing up, become adult, it will still remain the embryon, the soft mollusc. It will vaguely represent the progress of the superior lives; it will be as the fœtus, as the larvæ or nymph of the insect, in which, folded and hidden, there yet are the organs of the winged creature which is yet to come.
One trembles for a creature so weak; even the polypusthough not less soft is less in danger. Having life equally in all its parts, wounds, even mutilations will not kill the polypus: wounded and mutilated he still lives on, apparently forgetful of the excised parts. But the centralised mollusc is far more vulnerable. What a door in his ease is open to death!
The uncertain motion of the Medusa, which sometimes, perchance, may save her; the mollusc, at least at the outset, possesses but very slightly. All that is granted to him is his sloughing or exuding a gelatine matter, which walls him in, and replaces the cuirass of the oursin and the oursin's rock. The mollusc has the advantage of finding his defence within himself. Two valves form a house, light and fragile, indeed, so much so that those which float are transparent; in the case of those which are to be stationary, the mucus forms a filamentary anchoring cable, called the hyssas. It is formed exactly as silk is from an element originally quite gelatinous. The gigantic Iridacne, moors so fast by that cable, that the Madrepores mistake it for an islet, build upon it, envelope it, and strangle it.
Passive and motionless life. It has no other event than the periodical visit of the sun and light, and no other action but to absorb what comes, and to secrete the jelly which makes the house, and will by degrees do the rest. The attraction of the light, always in the same direction, centralizes the view; and behold theeye. The secretion fixed by a constant effort, becomes an appendage, an organ which lately was a cable, and which by and bye will become the foot, a shapeless and inarticulated mass, which will bend itself to anything. It is the fin of those that swim, the pick of those that burrow in the sand, and the foot of those who at first rather crawl than walk. Some species arch it so that they can make a clumsy essay at leaping.
Poor tribe, terribly exposed, pursued by many enemies, tossed by the waves and bruised on the rocks. Those of them which do not succeed in building a house, seek a shelter in living beds; they find a tent with the polypes, or with the floating Halcyons. The pearl-bearing Avicule, tries to find a quiet life in the hollows of the sponge. The Pholade, tries in his stony retreat, to imitate the arts of the oursins, but with what inferiority! Instead of the admirable chisel of the oursin, which might be envied by our stone cutters, the Pholade has but a little rasp, and to dig out a shelter for her fragile shell, she wears out the shell itself.
With but a few exceptions, the moluscs know themselves the prey of everything, and are therefore the most timid of creatures. The Cone so well knows that he is sought after, that he dares not leave his shelter, and dies there, from fear of being killed. The Volute and the Porcelain drag slowly along their pretty houses, and conceal them as well as they can. The Casque, toget along with his palace, has only a little Chinese foot, so small and so useless that he scarcely attempts to walk.
Such the life, such the dwelling; in no other species is there more complete identity between the inhabitant and the habitation; taken from his own substance, his house is but a continuation, a supplement of his own body; alike it even in form and tints. The architect, beneath the edifice, is himself its very foundation-stone.
A very simple thing it is for the sedentaries to remain sedentary. The oyster, regularly fed by the sea, has only to gape when he would dine, and sharply to close his shells, when he has any suspicion that he may become himself a dinner for some hungry neighbor. But for the travelling mollusc the thing is more complicated. He can travel, but he cannot leave behind him his beloved house which he will need for defence as well as shelter; and it is precisely while on his journey, that he is most liable to be attacked. He must shelter, above all, the most delicate part of his being, the tree by which he breathes, and whose little roots nourish him. His head is of little consequence, often it is lost without the destruction of life; but if the viscera were left uncovered and wounded, he must die.
Thus, prudent and cuirassed he seeks his livelihood. Come nightfall, he asks himself whether he will be quite safe in a wide open lodging? Will not some inquisitivesintrude a look—who knows—may not some one find the way in with claw and tooth as well as glance?
The hermit reflects. He has but one instrument, his foot, from that he developes a very serviceable appendage with which he closes the aperture and behold him safe at home for the night. His great and permanent difficulty is this, to combine safety with connection with the outer world. He cannot, like the oursin, utterly isolate himself; without the aid of his instructors and nurses, light and air, he cannot strengthen his soft body and make his organs. He must acquire senses; he needs scent and hearing, those guides of the blind; he must acquire sight, and above all, he must be able to breathe freely. Great and imperative function, that! How little we think of it while it is easy; but what terrible pain and agitation if it become too difficult! Let our lungs become congested, let the larynx even be embarrassed for a single night and our agitation and anxiety are so extreme, so unendurable, that often, at all risks, we have every window thrown open. With the asthmatic, the anxiety and torture are so extreme that when they cannot breathe freely through the natural organ, they create a supplementary means. Air, air, air, or death!
Nature, when thus pressed, is terribly inventive. We not wonder if the poor sedentaries, stifling in their houses, have discovered a thousand means, invented athousand sorts of pipes through which to admit the vital air. One admits air between plates around his feet, another by a sort of comb, another by a disc or buckler, and others by extending threads, some with pretty side plumes, and lastly, some have on their back a little tree, a pretty miniature aspen, which trembles continually and at every movement inhales or exhales a breath.
Sometimes those most sensitive and important organs affect the most elegant and fanciful forms; we would say that they wish to plead, to melt, to secure mercy, taking every form and every color. These little children of the sea, the molluscs, in their infantine grace, in their rich variety of colors, are their ocean mother's eternal ornament and joy. Stern as she may be, she has but to look on them, and she must smile.
But a timid life is full of melancholy. One cannot doubt that she greatly suffers from her severe seclusion, that fairest of the fair, that queen beauty of the seas, the Haliotide. She has a foot, and could, if she chose, get along, though slowly; but she dares not. Ask her why, and she will reply: "I am afraid. The Crab is continually watching me, and a whole world of voracious fish are continually swimming over my head. My cruel admirer, man, punishes me for my beauty; pursuing me from the Indies to the Pole, and is now loading whole ships with me at golden California."
But the unfortunate, though unable to go out, has discovereda subtle means of procuring air and water; in her house, she has little windows, which communicate with her little lungs. Hunger at length compels her to risk something, and towards evening she crawls a little around, and feeds on some sea-weed, her sole nourishment.
Here let us remark, that those marvellous shells, not only the Haliotide, but the Widow (black and white) and the Golden Mouth (of mingled pearly and gold color,) are poor herbivori, inoffensive, temperate, feeders. A living, and decisive refutation, that, of those who fancy that beauty is the daughter of Death, of blood, of murder, of a merely brutal accumulation of animal substance.
But to these, our beautiful shell-tenants, the merest modicum of subsistence suffices. Their chief aliment is the light which they drink in, by which they are permeated, by which they color and tint, with more than rainbow beauty, and variety of tint, their inner dwelling, in which they conceal and cherish their solitary love. Each of them is double, hermaphrodite; lover and loved, in one. As the palaces of the East are concealed by dark and repulsive outer walls, so, here, also, without, all is rude, within, all is of the most dazzling beauty; the hymeneal seclusion is lightened up by the gleaming and many-hued reflections of a little sea of mother of pearl, which, even when the house is closedto the outer light, create a faëry, a mysterious, and a most lovely twilight.
It is a great consolation that when our poor prisoners cannot have the sun, they can at least have a moon of their own, a paradise of soft and trembling lights, ever changing, yet ever renewed, and giving to that sedentary life, that little variety which is absolutely needed by every creature.
The poor children who work in the mines, ask visitors, not for food, or sweetmeats, or money, or toys—all they ask for is the means of getting more light. And it is the same with our Ocean children, the Haliotides. Every day, blind though they be, they feel, and greedily welcome, the return of the light, receiving it, and contemplating it, with the whole of their transparent bodies; and when the light has departed, from without, they still preserve and nurse some portion of it within themselves. They watch, they wait, they hope for its return; their whole little soul consists of that hope, that watching, that eager desire, that incessant yearning. Who can doubt that the return of the glad light is as delightful to them as it is to us, nay, even more so than it is to us, who have the manifold distractions of so busy and varied a life?
Their whole lives pass in thinking, wishing, divining, hoping, or regretting; their great lover, the Sun. Never seeing him, they yet, in their own fashion, certainlycomprehend that that warmth, that glorious light comes to them from without, and from a great centre, powerful, fecund and beneficent. And they love that great deeply felt, though never seen, central light, which caresses them, fills them with joy, floods them with life. Had they the power, they no doubt would rush to seek his rays. And, at least, attached as they are to their abode, they, like the Brahmin at the door of the Pagoda, silently offer him up their homage, at once meditative and thrilling. First flower of instructive worship. Already they love and pray, who say the little word which the Holy prefers to all prayer—thatOh!that heart utterance, which contents and pleases Heaven. When the Indian utters it at sunrise, he well knows that all that innocent world of mother of pearl, pearl, and humblest shells, utters it with him, from the depths of the seas.
I fully understand what the sight of the pearl suggests of feeling and fancy to the charmingly untutored heart, the woman heart, that dreams, and fancies, and is stirred by a sweet, and strange, and uncomprehended emotion. That pearl is not exactly a person, but neither, on the other hand, is it exactly a thing. What adorable whiteness; no, call it not mere whiteness, butcandor, virginal candor; no, not virginal, but better still. For your young virgins, sweet and modest as they are, have always a slight dash of young tartness, andverdancy. No, the pearl's candor rather resembles that of the innocent young bride, so pure, yet so submissive to love.
No ambition to shine. Our pearl softens, almost suppresses, its lights. At first, you see only a dull white; it is only when you have taken a second and a closer glance that you discover its mysterious iris, its exquisitely glancing and pure light.
Where lived it? Ask the deep Ocean. On what? Ask the sunbeams; like some clear spirit it lived on love and light.
Great mystery! But our beautiful pearl herself explains it. We cannot look upon her without feeling that this creature, at once so lovely and so meek, must for a long time have lived in quietude, waiting and waited for, willing nothing and doing nothing, but the will of the beloved one.
The son of the sea put his beautiful dream into his shell, the shell into the mother of pearl, and she into the pearl, which is but a concentration of herself.
But the pearl we are told only comes to her mother in consequence of some wound, some continued suffering, which withdraws or absorbs all vulgar life into that divine poetry.
I have been told that the great ladies of the East, more delicate and tasteful than our vulgar rich, shun the diamond and allow their soft skin to be touched onlyby the pearl. And in truth, the brilliancy of the diamond is not in accord with the light of love. A necklace and a pair of bracelets of fine pearls are the harmonious and true decorations for woman; instead of diverting the glance of the lover, they move him, make tenderness more tender—say to him—"No noise—let us love!" The pearl seems amorous of woman, and woman of the pearl. The ladies of the North, when they have once put on pearl ornaments, never afterwards remove them, but carry them day and night concealed beneath their attire. On very rare occasions, if the rich fur cape, lined with white satin, chances to slip aside, we may catch a momentary glance of the happy ornament, the inseparable necklace. It reminds one of the silken tunic which the Odalisque wears close to her person, and loves so much that she will not part with it until it is worn and torn beyond all possibility of repair; believing it as she does to be a talisman, an infallible love charm.
It is just so with the pearl; like the silk, it drinks in and is impregnated with the very life of the wearer. When it has slept so many nights upon her fair bosom, the ornament is no longer an ornament, it is a part of the person, and is no longer to be seen by an indifferent eye. One alone has a right to know it, and to surprise upon that necklace the mystery of the beloved woman.
CHAPTER IX.
THE SEA ROVERS (POULPE, &C.)
The Medusæ and the Molluscs are generally innocent creatures, and I have thus far dwelt, as it were, with them in their amiable and peaceful world. Thus far I have met with few carnivora; and even those few killed only in the stern necessity of hunger, and even of those part fed only on atoms, animal jelly, life unorganized, and scarcely commenced. As a consequence, pain, anger, cruelty were absent. Their little souls had, nevertheless, a ray, the aspiration towards the light alike of Heaven and of Love, revealed in the changing flame which illumines and rejoices the seas.
But, now, I have to enter into quite another world: a world of war, slaughter, fierce pursuit, and greedy devouring. I must confess that from the beginning, from the first appearance of life, death also appeared; a rapid and useful purification of the globe from the weak and slow, but prolific tribes whose fecunditywould otherwise have been mischievous. In the oldest strata we find two wondrous creatures, theDevourerand theSucker. The first is made known to us by the imprint of the Trilobite, a species no longer existing, an extinct destroyer of extinct species. The second is known to us by a frightful remnant, a beak of almost two feet pertaining to the great Sucker, the Leiche or Poulpe of Dujardin. Judging from that immense beak, this monster must have had an enormous body, and sucking-arms of twenty or thirty feet, like a prodigious spider.
Sad reflection, these murderous creatures are those which we earliest find in the depths of the earth. Are we then to suppose that death preceded life? No doubt; but the soft creatures upon which these monsters fed have perished utterly, not leaving remains or even imprint of themselves.
The devourers and the devoured, were they two nations of different origin? The contrary is more probable. From the mollusc, form undecided, matter still fit to be converted to any form, the superabundant strength of the young world, richly plethoric, abounding in alimentation, there must at an early period have proceeded two forms, contrary in appearance, but tending and qualified to the same end. Swelling and breathing, and measurelessly inflating itself, the Mollusc became an enormous balloon, an absorbing bladder, absorbingall the more as it stretched the more, ever craving and ever consuming, but toothless,—and we have theSucker. On the other hand, by the self-same force, the Mollusc gradually developing articulated members of which each had its shell, and hardening this shelled creature everywhere, but especially at the claws and mandibles formed for gnawing and grinding, to pulp or powder, the very hardest substances became—theDevourer. Let us in the first place, in this chapter, speak of the first, theSucker.
The Sucker of the soft gelatinous world, was himself soft and gelatinous. Warring upon and devouring the molluscs, he himself none the less, remained mollusc, that is to say, still a mere embryon. There would be something absurd, caricatural, were it not so terrible, in this sight of a mere fœtus, soft and transparent, yet cruel, raging, eager, breathing nothing but murder. For he, see you, goes not to war for the mere sake of food. He has a real passion for destroying, for destruction's sake; whenever he has gorged himself, well nigh to bursting, he will destroy still. Destitute of defensive armour, his threatening snortings disguise, but by no means quiet, his real anxiety; his real, his only safety, is an attack. He is the veritable bully of the young world; really vulnerable himself, and yet so terrible to others; he sees in everything that he meets only enemy or victim. At all risks he casts hither andthither his long arms, or rather his whip-lashes, tipped with cupping glasses, and upon enemy or victim, before the fight or the capture commences, he sends out his stupefying, paralysing effluvia.
Double power. To the mechanical strength of these outstretched arms, add the magical force of that mysterious fluid, and a singularly acute hearing and quick eye. You see in all these, a creature to alarm you.
What must it have been, then, when the early world so lavished its wealth of alimentation, that these monsters of the deep could feed and swell indefinitely? They have decreased now, both in number and in size. Yet, even lately, Rang tells us that he has seen them big as a hogshead; and Peron has seen them quite as large in the South Sea. The creature rolled, and snorted in the rolling wave, with a noise to terrify, to astonish, all meaner creatures. His arms, six or seven feet in length, turning, twisting, writhing, and grasping in every direction, imitated some furious pantomime, some fantastic dance of at once furious and eccentric serpents.
After these matter of fact statements, it seems to me, that we should not be quite so incredulous, not quite so scornful, when we read the accounts of the old voyagers; we should not curl the lipquiteso insolently as we read, in Denis de Montford, that he saw a monstrous Poulpe, grasp, with his enormous arms, lash, scourge,smite, stupefy with his electric lashes a fierce and strong mastiff which, in spite of all his efforts, and his terrible howlings, had to succumb, did succumb,diddie in that giant and terrible embrace.
The Poulpe, that terrible and living steam machine, can accumulate such incalculable force and elasticity, that, as d'Orbigny tells us (see his articleCephal.) it can leap from the sea to the deck of a ship. This at once relieves our old voyagers from the charge so often and so lightly made against them, of exaggeration and mere romance. They told us, and it now seems quite truly told us, that they came athwart a gigantic Poulpe that leaped inboard, twining its prodigious arms around masts and shrouds; and the monstrous creature would have had possession of the craft, and would have devoured all hands, but that these latter cut away its arms with their axes, as they would have cut away masts in a case of impending wreck, and the mutilated but still threatening creature fell into the sea.
Some have given this creature credit for arms of sixty feet in length; and others have reported that while cruising in the North seas, they fell in with the Kraken, a monstrous creature, half a league in circumference, no doubt, one of our terriblePoulpes, able to embrace, stupefy, and devour, a whale a hundred feet long.
The prolonged existence of these monsters, would have endangered Nature herself, would have absorbedour very globe. But, on the one hand, gigantic birds (perhaps, for instance, theEpiornis) made war upon them; and on the other hand the exhausted earth destroyed the monster by cutting off its supply of alimentation.
Thank Heaven, our existing Poulpes are somewhat less terrible. Their elegant species of the present day, the Argonaut, that graceful swimmer in its wavy shell, the Calmar, good sailor, if ever there was one, and the handsome Seiche, blue-eyed, and beautiful to look upon, traverse the Ocean, hither and thither, annoying nothing but the small creatures that they need for their support.
In them we see exhibited the first approach to the vertebral bone; they display, too, a perfect rainbow of changing colors, that come and go—shine, fade, dazzle and die. We may quite fairly call them the Chameleons of the sea. They have the exquisite perfume, ambergris, which the whale only owes to the countless multitudes of Seiches which it has absorbed. And the porpoises, too, make an enormous destruction of them. Your Seiches are very gregarious. About the month of May, they seek the coast to deposit their eggs, and the Porpoises await them there, sure of a splendid banquet. And your Porpoise is somewhat of agourmetthough sufficientlygourmand; he feeds delicately, though we cannot deny that he feeds largely. Thehead and the eight arms are his tid-bits, tender and easy of digestion; the rest of the carcass they may have who come for it. Tens of thousands of these mutilated Seiches you find upon the coast at Royan; and there, too, you will see the Porpoises making their mighty bounds when in chase of their coveted prey, the Seiches, or in bacchanal enjoyment and revelling when the prey has been taken and the banquet is over.
Notwithstanding the strange, not to say grotesque, appearance of its beak, the Seiche is decidedly an interesting creature. All the various shades of the most brilliant and various rainbow, come and go, die and reappear on his transparent skin, according to the play of the light as he turns now hither and now thither, and as he dies his azure eyes look upon you with an expression, now flashing and now fading, which seems to rebuke you for your cruelty in killing, or to express a regret at parting with life.
The general decrease of that class, so immensely important in the past ages, is less remarkable as to the navigators (Seiches, &c.) than in the Poulpe, properly so called, the sad frequenter of our shores. It has not the same firmness as the Seiche, strengthened as the latter is by an interior bone, and it has not, like the Argonaut, a resisting exterior, a shell to protect the most vulnerable organs. Neither has it the kind of sail which aids its navigation and spares it the labor ofrowing. It paddles about along our shores, hugging the shore like some timid coaster. And its conscious inferiority teaches it habits of treachery; it is at once timid and bold—lying in ambush until quite sure that it can devour without the preliminary necessity of a fight. Lying in wait in some rocky crevice, it awaits its prey. That having passed in unsuspicious security, your Poulpe throws out the terrible lashes, the weaker of the prey are devoured, the stronger get loose and escape. A man when swimming, if thus attacked, finds no difficulty in mastering his at once insolent and imbecile assailant. Disgusted, but not alarmed, he handles the creature without gloves, crushes, collapses him, and feels actually vexed with himself for having even for an instant been provoked by an enemy so contemptible. "Bah!" one is tempted to exclaim, on having so easily vanquished such a thing—"Bah! You came swelling, blowing, threatening, and after all you prove to be only a sham, a mask rather than a being. Without fixity, without substance, a blown-up bladder, now collapsed, to be to-morrow a mere drop, a nameless portion of the dark blue waters of the Sea."
CHAPTER X.
CRUSTACÆ—BATTLE AND INTRIGUE.
If, from some rich collection of armor, of the middle ages, immediately after examining the mighty masses of iron in which our knights of old oppressed and half stifled themselves, we go to the Museum of Natural History, and examine the armor of the Crustacæ, we shall actually feel something very like contempt for our human skill. The former are a mere masquerade of absurd disguises, that seem especially designed for encumbering their warlike wearers, and rendering them impotent. But these latter, especially the armor of the terribleDecapodes, the ten-footed warriors of the waters, are so marvellously armed that had they but the stature and bulk of our human warriors, none of us could dare even to look upon them. Theveni vidiof Cæsar, would be eternally followed by his soon-endedVici; they would not need to seize, or to strike; their very aspect would thrill, magnetise—utterly stupefy and subdue us.
There they are, all ready for the fight, armed at all points. Within that terrible arsenal, offensive and defensive, how lightly, yet how strongly are they armed. There are the strong nippers, mandibles, ready to craunch through iron itself, and the cuirasses, furnished with the thousand darts, every one of which cries aloud to the foeNoli me tangere. We ought to be very thankful to Nature, that has made them thus diminutive. If only the stature and bulk of man were given to them, who, who, and by what means, could engage with them? Fire arms would be in vain; the Elephant, vast and mighty, and intelligent as he is, would have to hide; the fierce Tiger, with lashing tail, blood-shotten eyes and fatal paw, would seek shelter on the topmost branches of the tallest trees, and the trice solid hide of the Rhinoceros, would no longer be invulnerable.
We perceive at once that the interior agent, the motive power of that machine, centralized within an almost invariable convex, has, even from that single peculiarity, a perfectly enormous force. The slender and delicate elegance of man, his longitudinal figure, divided into three parts, with four great and diverging appendages, distant, all, from his centre, make him, whatever we may say to the contrary, an essentially weak animal. In those armors of the old knights, in the great, telegraphic arms, and in the heavy, pendant legs, we, at a glance, see, and sadden, as we see, the unsteady,uncentralized creature; halting and staggering, that the slightest collision will beat to the earth. In the crustacæ, on the contrary, the appendages are at once so firmly, so neatly, and so closely, conjoined to the short, rounded, and compacted body, that every blow, every touch, every grasp, has the whole weight, and the whole force and impetus of the entire mass. Even to the extremity of its claws, every inch is instinct with nervous energy, mighty with the whole physical force.
It has two brain systems, head and body; but to concentrate its power thus, it must have no neck; head and body must be undivided, a dual unity. Marvellous, perfectly marvellous, simplification! The head combines eyes, feelers, claws and jaws. When the quick eye has discerned the enemy, or the prey, the feelers touch, the claws grasp, the jaws crush, and, immediately behind them, the stomach, which is itself furnished with a strong crushing machinery, triturates and digests whatever enters it. In an instant the prey is seized, crushed, digested, and disappears.
In this creature, every organ is superior.
The eyes can discern, both in front, and in rear. Convexed, exterior, anden facettes, they can, at a glance, sweep almost the entire horizon.
The antennæ, the feelers, organs of touch and trial, of warning and of guiding, have the sense of touch at their extremities, of hearing and of scent, at their base.An immense advantage, such as we do not possess. How would it be if the human hand could hear and smell? How rapid and concentrated would then be our power of observation. Divided among three senses, each of which works independently of the other, our impressions are, for that very reason, very often inexact or evanescent.
Of the ten feet of the Decapodes, six are hands, hard, griping pincers, and, moreover, are, at their extremeties, organs of respiration. And in this last particular our singularly armed warrior, by a quite revolutionary expedient, solves the problem which so much embarrassed our poor mollusc; how to breathe, in spite of the shell. To this he calmly replies: "I breathe through hand and foot. This great, this fatal difficulty of breathing, which would so surely overcome me, I overcome by the very same weapon with which I smite, the very same implement by which I seize and masticate my food."
The chief and most potent enemies of the Crustacæ, are the tempest and the rock. Little in the deep sea, they almost constantly lurk along shore in waiting for their prey. Often, as they lurk there waiting for the oyster to open and furnish them with a breakfast, a hard gale drives them from their ambush, and then their armor becomes their fatality. Hard, and destitute of elasticity, it receives the full and unmitigated shock of every collision; dashed upon the rocks, they leave it,if alive, only with broken weapons and rent armor. Happily for them, they, like the Oursin, can replace an organ, lost or mutilated. So well do they know that strange power, that they voluntarily shake off a claw, if confined by it. It would seem that Nature especially favors servants so useful. To counterbalance the infinite fecundity of other species, the crustacæ have an infinite power of absorption. And they are everywhere; on every coast; ubiquitous as the seas themselves. The Vultures, and other carrion birds, share with the crustacæ the essential office of health preservers. Let some large animal die, and, on the instant, the bird above, and the crab below and within, are at work to prevent it from polluting the atmosphere.
The Talitre, that small and skipping crab that we might almost mistake for an insect, burrows in the sands of the sandy shores. Let a tempest drive a quantity of Medusæ or other such prey upon the beach, and you will immediately see the sands all in motion, and myriads of crabs swarming, leaping, hungry, and apparently determined to clear away the spoil before the next flood tide.
Large, robust, and full of wiles, the great crabs are a very combative race. So highly are they gifted with the instinct of war that they even resort to noise in order to intimidate their enemies; advancing to the fight they clash their claws together with a noise likethat of castanettes. Yet, they are very prudent when they have to do with a stronger enemy. I remember to have watched them from the top of a high rock, when the tide was out. But, high above them as I was, they perceived that they were watched, and speedily beat a retreat; the warriors hurrying sidelong, as is their wont, into their secure ambush. They resemble Achilles far less than Hannibal. When they feel that they are the stronger, they will attack both the living and the dead, and the helplessly wounded man may well dread them. It is related that, on some desert isle, several of Drake's sailors were attacked and devoured by these greedy creatures.
No living creature can fight them with equal weapons. The gigantic Poulpe who should enlace the smallest of the crab family, would do so at the risk of losing his antennæ, and the greediest of fish would not venture to swallow so hard a morsel.
When the Crustaceæ are large they are the tyrants and the terror of both land and sea; their impregnable armor enables them to attack everything. They would multiply to such an excess as to disturb the balance of living creatures, but that their armour itself is their great peril and destroyer. Hard and inelastic, it will not yield to the increasing growth of the animal and thus becomes its prison always, and at certain periods its torture.
To find, despite this solid wall, the means of breathing,it is obliged to place the organ of respiration in that very organ, the claw, which it most frequently loses. To allow for the growth of its interior substance, it is obliged—most perilous obligation!—to submit that the hard cuirass shell shall at times be discarded; that the creature shall have its seasons ofmoulting; that the eyes, and the claws, and the tentacles, which supply the place of lungs shall suffer with all the rest.
A strange and pitiful sight it is to see the Lobster writhing, twisting, struggling, to get out of its too confining armor. So violent is the struggle that he sometimes actually casts off his claws. Then he remains soft, weak, exhausted. In two or three days a raw shell covers the naked body; but the Crab does not so easily repair damages; it takes him much longer to renew his armor, and during that time he is the victim of all that previously were his unspared and unpitied prey. Even handed justice now becomes terrible to him. The victims now have their revenge; the strong is subjected to the law of the weak; falls, as a species, to their level, and pays full share in the great balance between Life and Death.
If one died but once in this world, there would be less of sadness, but every living thing must partially die daily; daily suffer moulting, that partial death which is essential to the continuance of life. Hence, a weaknessand a melancholy to which we do not readily confess. But what is to be done? The bird in its moulting time is sad and silent; still more sad is the poor snake when it casts its skin. We, also, in every month, every day, every instant, are parting with portions of our living frame, but as gently as constantly, and only feel weakened, in those moments of dreamy melancholy, when the vital flame is weakened, that it may become stronger and more vivid.
How far more terrible it must be for the creature whose whole external frame work must be rent asunder and cast off. It is weak, timorous, crushed;—at the mercy of the first comer.
There are crustacæ of the fresh water that must thus partially die a score of times in every two months. Others (the crustacean suckers) succumb to this terrible operation, are unable to renew their armor, and lose all power. So to speak, they resign their piratical commission, and, coward-like, take shelter in the viscera of the larger animals, which, in spite of themselves, have to forage for them and to feed them.
The insect in its Chrysalis seems utterly to forget itself, not only does it not suffer, but it even seems to enjoy that semblance of death, that unconscious life, which the infant enjoys in its warm cradle. But the crustacæ, in their moulting time, see themselves and feel themselves as they are, suddenly hurled from energeticand terrible life and power to the most complete impotency. They are alarmed, helpless, lost, and can but creep under some sheltering stone, seeing nothing, hearing nothing, feeling nothing but the terror of the coming foe and the unpitied death. Never having encountered terrible foe, or even serious obstacle, and relieved from all necessity of industry by their potent armor, they no sooner lose that than they find themselves utterly without resource. Each might protect the other, but they are all defenceless at the same time. Yet it is said that, in certain species, the male does strive to protect the female, and that if we take one we take both.
That terrible necessity of moulting, and the eager research of man, more and more lord of the shores, and the extinction of the old species that afforded them such abounding alimentation, have necessarily kept down the increase of the crustaceæ. Even the Poulpe which, being good for nothing, is neither hunted after nor eaten, has considerably decreased in number. How much more so, then, the crustaceæ whose flesh is so excellent and so coveted by all creatures. They actually seem to be aware of this. The weaker among them resort to the grossest little rogueries to protect themselves; they are ingenious, intriguing. This latter epithet is the true one; they really resemble intriguers who, without visible means, contrive to support themselvesupon the means of others. A kind of bastards, neither quite fish, nor quite flesh, they make increment alike of the living, the dying and the dead; occasionally even of land animals.
The Oxystome makes himself a kind of miser, and thieves by night; the Birgus at nightfall quits the sea on a marauding expedition, and, for want of better, even ascends the cocoa tree and eats the fruit. The Dromios disguise themselves, and Bernard the Hermit, unable to harden his exterior, seizes a Mollusc, devours the body, and clothes himself in the shell. Thus fitted out, he prowls at evening in search of food, and we detect the furtive pilgrim by the noise which he cannot avoid making as he halts and staggers along, under the load of his ill acquired and ill fitting armor.
Others, at most times, but especially in the winter, seek the land, and burrow. Perhaps they would change their nature altogether and become insects, were the sea not so dear to them. As once in every year the twelve tribes of Israel were wont to wend their way to Jerusalem to celebrate the feast of Tabernacles, there are certain shores to which these faithful children of the sea repair to pay her their homage and to consign to her tender care their eggs, thus recommending their offspring to her who nursed their ancestry.
CHAPTER XI.
THE FISH.
It was inevitable that the free element, the Sea, should, sooner or later, produce a creature like unto herself, eminently free, undulating and fluid, gliding like the wave, but with a marvellous mobility founded on an interior miracle greater still, on an internal organization at once delicate and strong, and very elastic, such as no creature had previously ever approached to.
The Mollusc, crawling on its belly, was the poor serf of the glebe, and the Poulpe, with all his swelling and threatening pride, swimming badly and unable to walk or crawl at all, was still more completely the serf of chance. The warlike crustaceæ, by turns so high and so low, alternately the terror and derision of all, were at times the slave, the prey of even the weakest creatures.
Great and terrible servitudes those; how were they to be remedied?
Strength is the very soul of liberty. From the verybeginning, Life seems gradually but confusedly to have sought the creation of a central axis which should give the creature unity, and enormously increase its strength of motion. The rayed family and the molluscs exhibit a presentiment, a partial sketch of it, but they were too much led away by the insoluble problem of the exterior defence. The covering, always the covering, was that which constantly occupied the attention of these poor beings. As to that one point, they produced masterpieces; the thorny ball of the Oursin, the shell at once open and closed of the Haliotide, and, finally, the armors of jointed pieces of the Crustaceæ, are the very perfection of armor at once defensive and terribly offensive. What more could be required? It would seem,nothing.
Nothing?Say, rather, everything. Let us have a creature who shall trust entirely to motion, a creature of freedom and audacity, that shall look down upon all these creatures as infirm, or miserably slow; a creature that shall consider the envelope as a merely secondary matter, and concentrate his whole strength within himself.
The crustaceæ shroud themselves, as it were, in an exterior skeleton. The fish has his skeleton within, to which nerves, muscles, and all organs are attached.
This seems a fanciful invention, and one quite contrary to good sense; to place the hard and the solid beneaththe thick covering of the soft! To place the bone, so useful without, precisely where it seems it must be so useless! The crustaceæ must needs have laughed in derision when they first saw the short, thick, soft fish of the Indian Ocean, for instance, without defensive armor, having no strength save inwardly, protected only by its oily fluidity, by the exuberant mucus that surrounds it, and which by degrees consolidates into elastic scales, a slight cuirass, which ever yielding, never yields entirely.
It was a revolution comparable to that of Gustavus Adolphus, when he relieved his soldiery of their heavy iron armor, and covered their breasts only with the at once stout and yielding buff leather. A late revolution, but a wise one.
Our fish, being no longer confined like the crab or lobster, imprisoned in armor, is at the same time relieved from the cruel condition inseparable from that armor, themoulting, with its attendant danger, weakness, struggle, and enormously wasteful expenditure of strength. Like the superior animals and man, he moults slowly. He economises and hoards up strength, and creates for himself the treasure of a powerful nervous system, with numerous telegraphic threads that connect spine and brain. Even when the bone is soft or absent, and the fish preserves its embryonic appearance, he has nevertheless his great harmony in that abundant provision of nervous threads.
We do not find in the fish the elegant weakness of the reptile and the insect, so slender that in those parts one can cut through them as through a thread; his segments are within, and well protected. He uses them for contractile power, but does not, as the less perfect reptile and insect do, expose them to external injury.
Like the crustaceæ, the fish prefers strength to beauty, and for this end has no neck; head and trunk form one mass. Admirable principle of strength, which enables him, in cleaving through so yielding an element as water, to strike, at will, with a thousand fold more force than is necessary, and then his motion is as the flight of an arrow or the flash of lightning!
The interior bone, single in the Seiche, is in the fish at once one and multiple; one for force of unity, multiple for elasticity, enabling the muscles alternately to contract and expand, and thus create swift motion. Marvellous, really marvellous is that formation of the fish, so solid without and contractile within, that inward keel to which are attached the motor muscles which work with an alternating shock. Exteriorly, he exposes only his auxiliary oars, short fins which are but little in danger, being strong, slippery, and sharp to wound, or to scrape. How superior in all this is the fish, to the Poulpe and the Medusa, which present to all comers soft flesh, a tempting morsel for the crustaceæ or the porpoise.
This true son of the water, gliding and mobile as his mother, glides by means of his mucus, cleaves with his head, impelled by his contractile muscles, and finally, with his strong fins rows and steers.
The least of these powers would suffice, but he unites them all; a perfect model and absolute type of swift motion.
Even the bird is less mobile, seeing that he has to perch. He is fixed for the night, but the fish, never; even asleep, he still floats.
So extremely mobile, he at the same time is in the highest degree strong and lively. Wherever there is water, there is the fish: he is the universal creature of the globe. In the loftiest lakes of Asia and of the Cordilleras, where the atmosphere is so rarefied that no other creature can endure it, the fish lives and thrives. It is the red fish of the Gudgeon species, which thus looks down upon all the earth. In like manner, in the great depths, beneath the most enormous weights, live the Herring and the Cod. Forbes, who divides them into ten superposed beds or stages, finds them all inhabited, and in the lowest of all, supposed to be so dark, he finds a fish provided with eyes so admirable that he finds sufficient light in that which seems to us the uttermost darkness of night.