Sometimes, however, it is an instinct given
us by Providence for the protection from our
ravages of an inferior race, whose purpose in
creation is complete without our intervention.
No philosophy can overcome this instinct.
Snails, for example, would be of small use to
us, had we an appetite for dining on them:
we might soon clear snails and slugs out of
our island, to the great discomfiture of birds
and other creatures. "This is a vulgar
prejudice," said Dr. Black, the celebrated
chemist; "why should not a man eat snails?"
So he and Dr. Hutton, the geologist, agreed
that they would rise above the narrow
fancies of the vulgar, and prove their
philosophy by dining together on a snaily mess.
They met, the dish of snails was brought to
table, and the cover being removed, the two
great men looked at their dinner with
countenances very blank indeed. However, they
had compromised each other, and began their
dinner, like the supper of the lady in the
"Arabian Nights," picking up daintily one
grain at a time. Neither was willing to
forfeit his character as a philosopher, till
Dr. Hutton, laying down his fork, suggested,
"Don't you think they taste a little—just a
little—green?" " Very green " cried Dr.
Black; "they 're very green! Tak 'em awa'
—quick! "The edible snails used on the
continent, and chiefly at Vienna—where three
snails, at an eating-house, count as a plate of
meat—differ considerably from our hedge-
side friends. But we have got out of our
proper element—the water.

Against fish, no natural instinct warns man
not to aggress. They are sought among the ice
by Esquimaux, and hauled up out of the
Niger by quaint nets, that form a feature in
the bank scenery of that tropical river. A
volume might be filled with the contrivances
employed by men in all parts of the world
for reaping some part of the harvest of the
water. There was Lake Mœris in ancient
Egypt, formed as a great reservoir to store a
surplus from full inundations of the Nile, out
of which the country might be watered in
deficient years. The reservoir was also used
as a great farm of fish, the property of government,
that yielded an enormous pin-money
to the Egyptian queens. Negroes form tanks
into which fish and water flow when their
stream swells, and from which they let the
water drain through nets when the river
sinks, and keep dried, as a reserved store of
food, the fishes left to them. In China the
trained fishing cormorants have often been
described. The Chinese also walk into the
water, stripped, and beat the surface of the
pond or stream with boards. The fishes are
alarmed, and sink for safety to the water's
bed, in which these fishermen then feel for
them with their feet, and from which they
extract them with their toes. Fish are
appreciated all over the world as articles of diet,
and to this country they are capable of being
made the veritable treasures of the deep. In
periods of famine, the miserable inhabitants
of some islands in the Hebrides exist
entirely upon limpets, which they pick up
on their shore. The people round Lake
Como live almost entirely upon eels, and are
therewithal robust and long-lived. Sickly
neighbours come to re-establish health among
them.

We do not cry down meat; we do indeed
believe that the middle and upper classes in
this country eat more meat than is necessary;
that the old institution of a couple of fish days
in the week—two days of a diet less gross and
quite as wholesome—if it did nothing towards
public morals, did a little towards public health.
Let that be as it may, however. There is a
large class in this country fasting from fresh
meat more than health requires, because it is
too dear to come abundantly or often on their
scanty dinner-tables. These fasts they fill up
with most miserable substitutes for flesh,
when nothing hinders them from the enjoyment
of a savoury, sufficient dinner, but the
carelessness with which we have neglected to
be just to fish. What makes meat dear?
The farmer has to buy his stock, to watch it
daily, feed it on food raised out of expensive
land, physic it, house it. It costs much cash
and trouble to produce an ox. Now, turn to
our neglected pastures; our lakes, ponds, and
rivers. To stock them with fish is an easy
inexpensive process; how prolific fish are
every child knows; they want no turnip crops,
or mangel wurzel, no buildings to go to sleep
in; they require no fish-herd to watch their
movements. Stock the water with spawn;
throw in the seed; it matters not whether the
summer be too wet or too dry for other crops;
it matters not which way the wind shall blow;
the water yields you an abundant harvest.

Take, for instance, eels. They are an
admirable article of food; abundant, prolific,
hardy, and tenacious of life, easily
preserved. In Otaheite they are kept as pets in
large holes, grow vastly fat, will come out
to the summons of a whistle, and eat out of
a master's hand. Eels sink into the mud,
and with reduced vitality endure our cold.
Eels frozen and then buried four days under
snow, put afterwards into water and thawed
gradually, perfectly recovered. They endure
also privation of food, even of air, wonderfully.
Here is, one would think, a farming stock
protected against nearly all possible mishap.
The young eel grows to about twelve inches
in the first year, and in the second or third
year matures roe. A sharp-nosed eel has
been caught twenty-seven pounds in weight.
Of course a good farmer would feed them
well during their hungry months: in winter
they lose their appetites.

A French naturalist, M. Coste, has lately
been experimenting upon eels. Out of the mass
of young eels in the animalcule state, (in
which state, at the fitting season, they can be
obtained by tuns,) a number were fed in vats
and basins, where they grew and throve in a