STUDY SIXTH.

REPLY TO THE OBJECTIONS AGAINST PROVIDENCE, FOUNDED ON THE DISORDERS OF THE ANIMAL KINGDOM.

WE

E shall continue to display the fecundity of Northern Regions, in order to overturn the prejudice which would ascribe this principle of life, in plants and animals only to the heat of the South. I could expatiate on the numerous and extensive chaces of elks, rein-deer, water-fowls, heath-cocks, hares, white bears, wolves, foxes, martens, ermines, beavers, and many others, which the inhabitants of the northern districts annually carry on, the very peltry of which, above what they employ for their own use, supplies them with a very considerable branch of commerce for the markets of all Europe. But I shall confine myself entirely to their fisheries, because these precious gifts of the Waters are presented to all Nations, and are no where so abundant as in the North.

From the rivers and lakes of the North are extracted incredible multitudes of fishes. John Schaffer, the accurate Historian of Lapland, tells us,* that they catch annually at Torneo no less than thirteen hun*History of Lapland, by John Schaffer.

dred

" where the water is fresh, are rendered fetid by the fish which they contain. Besides herrings, there "may be seen an infinite number of shads, roach,

sturgeon, and a few lampreys, which find their way " from the Sea up the rivers."

It would appear that another column of those fishes issues from the North Pole, to the eastward of our Continent, and passes through the channel which separates America from Asia, for we are informed by a missionary that the inhabitants of the land of Yasso go to Japan to sell, among other dried fishes,* herrings also. The Spaniards, who have been attempting discoveries to the north of California, find all the nations of those regions to be fish-eaters, and unacquainted with every kind of cultivation. Though they landed there only in the middle of Summer, before perhaps the fishing season had commenced, they found pilchers in the greatest abundance, the native country and emigrations of which are the same, for vast quantities of a smaller size are taken at Archangel. I have eaten of them in Russia, at the table of Mareschal Count Munich, who called them the an chovies of the North.

But as the Northern Seas, which separate America from Asia, are not much known to us, I shall pursue this fish no further. I must however observe, that more than half of those herrings are filled with eggs, and if the propagation were to go on to it's full extent for three or four generations only, without interruption, the Ocean itself would be unable to con

* Ecclesiastical History of Japan, by Father F. Soliar. Book xix. chap xi.

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tain them. It is obvious to the first glance of the eye, that the herring produces at least as many eggs as the carp. M. Petit, a celebrated practitioner in Surgery and Medicine, has found by experiment that the two parcels of eggs of a carp eighteen inches long, weighed eight ounces two drachms, which make four thousand seven hundred and fifty-two grains; and that it required seventy-two of these eggs to make up the weight of one grain; which gives a product of three hundred forty-two thousand one hundred and forty-four eggs, contained in one roe weighing eight ounces and two drachms.

I have been somewhat diffuse on the subject of this particular species of fish, not in the view of promoting our commerce, which by it's offices, it's bounties, it's privileges, it's exclusions, renders every article scarce with which it intermeddles, but in compassion to the poorer part of the community, reduced in many places to subsist entirely on bread, while Providence is bestowing on Europe, in the richest profusion, the most delicate of fishes perhaps that swims in the Sea.* We are not to form our judgement from those which are brought to Paris after the season is over, and which are caught on our coasts; but from those which are caught far to the North, known in Holland by the name of pickled herrings, and which are thick, large, fat, with the flavour of a nut, so delicate and juicy, that they melt away in the cooking,

* More than one epicure has already made this observation; but here is another, on which few are disposed to dwell, it is this, that in all cases, and in all countries, the most common things are the best.

and

and are eaten raw from the pickle, as we do an chovies.

The South Pole is not less productive of fishes than the North. The Nations which are nearest to it, such as the inhabitants of the islands of Georgia, of New Zealand, of Maire's Strait, of the Terra-delFuego, of Magellan's Strait, live on fish, and practise husbandry of no kind. That honest Navigator, Sir John Narbrough, says, in his Journal of a Voyage to the South Seas, that Port-Desire, which lies in 47° 48 South Latitude, is so filled with penguins, seacalves, and sea-lions, that any vessel touching there may find provisions in abundance. All these animals, which are there uncommonly fat, live entirely on fish. When he was in Magellan's Strait, he caught at a single draught of the net more than five hundred large fishes, resembling the mullet, as long as a man's leg; smelts twenty inches long; a great quantity of fish like the anchovy; in a word, they found of every sort such an abundant profusion, that they ate nothing else during their stay in those parts. The beautiful mother-of-pearl shells which enrich our cabinets, under the name of the Magellan-oyster, are there of a prodigious size, and excellent to eat. The lempit, in like manner, grows there to a prodigious magnitude. There must be, continues he, on these shores an infinite number of fishes to support the seacalves, the penguins, and the other fowls, which live solely on fish, and which are all equally fat, though their number is beyond computation. They one day killed four hundred sea-lions in the space of half an hour. Of these some were eighteen feet long. Those which

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way, "The whales, which pursue them in great num"bers, and which dart their water-spouts into the

air, give to the Sea, at a distance, the appearance "of being covered over with smoking chimnies. "The herrings, in order to elude the pursuit, throw "themselves close in-shore into every little bay "and creek, where the water, before tranquil, forms "considerable swellings and surges, wherever they "croud to make their escape. They branch off in "such quantities that you may take them out in "baskets-full, and the country people can even catch "them by the hand." After all, however, that the united efforts of all these fishers can effect, hardly any impression is made on their great general column, which coasts along Germany, France, Spain, and stretches as far as the Straits of Gibraltar; devoured the whole length of their passage by an innumerable multitude of other fishers and sea-fowls, which follow them night and day, till the column is lost on the shores of Africa, or returns, as other Authors tell us, to the Climates of the North.

For my own part, I no more believe that herrings return to the Seas from whence they came, than that fruits re-ascend the trees from which they have once dropped. Nature is so magnificent in the entertainments which she provides for Man, that she never serves up the dishes a second time. I presume, conformably to the observation of Father Lamberti, a missionary in Mingrelia, that these fishes accomplish the circuit of Europe by going up the Mediterranean, and that the utmost boundary of their emigration is the extremity of the Black-Sea; and this is the more probable,