head must be connected with the functions of the jaws, as the
construction of the shoulder-blade must be related to the use of the
fore leg, which, being intended to strike and seize by talons, must have
a powerful support and a strong bony apparatus in the shoulder, which
might as well be called the organ of courage as the projection below the
frontal bone: but these animals have no more what is called courage in
man, than they have what is called reason: they face danger when they
are hungry, but almost always fly when their appetite is satisfied: a
hen, in defending her chickens against a powerful dog, or the game cock,
in fighting for the female, or the timid stag, at the time of the sexual
intercourse, shows quite as much of this quality as the most ferocious
royal tiger. Courage is the result of strong passions or strong motives;
and in man it usually results from the love of glory or the fear of
shame; and it appears to me a perfectly absurd idea, that of connecting
it with an organ, which is merely intended to assist the predatory
habits and the mastication of a carnivorous animal.
HAL.—I agree with Physicus in this view of the subject. I once heard a
physiologist of some reputation deducing an argument in favour of
craniology from the form of the skull of the beaver, which he called a
constructive animal, and contended, that there was something of the same
character in the skulls of distinguished architects: now, the skull of
the beaver is so formed, that he is able to use his jaws for cutting
down the trees with which he makes his dam; and if this analogy were
correct, the architect ought unquestionably to employ his teeth for the
same purpose; and though I have known distinguished men, who have been
in the habit of using knives for cutting furniture with a sort of
nervous restlessness of hand, I do not recollect to have heard of the
teeth being employed in the same way; and I think it would be quite as
correct, to find the architectural or constructive organ in the opposite
part of the body, the tail, as the beaver makes a more ingenious use of
this part than even of his mouth. Pray, have you ever observed, Poietes,
any particular protuberance in the nether parts of any of our
distinguished architects?
POIET.—I am not a craniologist; but I would have the doctrine overturned
by facts, and not by ridicule; and I have certainly seen some remarkable
instances, which were favourable to the system.
HAL.—My experience is entirely on the opposite side; and I once saw a
distinguished craniologist in error on a point, which he considered as
the most decided. He was shown two children, one of whom was possessed
of great mathematical acquirements, the other of extraordinary musical
taste. With the utmost confidence he pronounced judgment, and was
mistaken. It appeared to me, that, whilst he was examining the two
heads, he hummed an air, which, being out of tune, was not responded to
by the musical child; but somehow struck the fancy of the mathematical
one.
ORN.—This hucho is a very good fish, and, indeed, I can praise all the
varieties of the salmon on the table that I have yet tasted.
PHYS.—Amongst them, I prefer the char, which, I think, is even better
than the best fresh salmon I ever tasted.
POIET.—This char is surprisingly red and full of curd; I wonder at its
fat: It comes from the Grundtl See, which is a high Alpine lake, covered
with ice more than half the year: what food can the fish find in so pure
and cold a water?
HAL.—Minnows and small chubs are found in this lake; and the flies which
haunt it in summer have been aquatic larvæ in the autumn, winter, and
spring; and there are usually great quantities of small shell fish,
which live in the deeper parts of this water; so that char may find food
even in winter; and cold, or the repose to which it leads, seems
favourable to the development or conservation of fat. Most of the polar
animals (the whale, moose, seal, and white bear, for instance) are
loaded with this substance; and the salmon of the Arctic Ocean are
remarkable for their quantity of curd: those that run up the rivers in
Russia from the White Sea are said to be fatter and better, than those
caught in the streams which run into the Baltic.
ORN.—I agree with Physicus in his praise of the char: we are indebted to
you for an excellent entertainment.
HAL.—At Lintz, on the Danube, I could have given you a fish dinner of a
different description, which you might have liked as a variety. The four
kinds of perch, the _spiegel carpfen_, and the _siluris glanis_; all
good fish, and which I am sorry we have not in England, where I doubt
not they might be easily naturalized, and they would form an admirable
addition to the table in inland counties. Since England has become
Protestant, the cultivation of fresh water fish has been much neglected.
The _burbot_, or lotte, which already exists in some of the streams
tributary to the Trent, and which is a most admirable fish, might be
diffused without much difficulty; and nothing could be more easy than to
naturalize the _spiegel carpfen_ and _siluris_; and I see no reason why
the _perca lucio perca_ and _zingel_ should not succeed in some of our
clear lakes and ponds, which abound in coarse fish. The new Zoölogical
Society, I hope, will attempt something of this kind; and it will be a
better object than introducing birds and beast of prey—though I have no
objection to any source of rational amusement or philosophical
curiosity.
POIET.—A fish dinner such as you have just described, combined with one
such as we have enjoyed to-day, might, I think, be made an interesting
experimental lecture on natural history. The analogies of the different
species and genera of fishes, so distinct in the form of their organs,
are likewise marked in the appearance and taste of their flesh. The
salmon and the char may be regarded as the generic types of the salmo.
By trout, which have sometimes red and sometimes white flesh, they are
connected with the grayling and hucho. By the grayling the trout is
connected with the laveret, and by the laveret the genus salmo is
connected with the carp genus. The char is immediately connected with
the grayling, and laveret by the umbula. By the sea trout the salmon is
connected with the trout; and by the hucho, with the pike and perch
families.
HAL.—We will arrange a dinner of this kind in England, and by means of
it follow the analogies of salt and fresh water fishes. But the time for
our parting is almost arrived.—Let us drink a glass each of this old
wine of the Danube to our next happy meeting, and go and take a last
look of the Fall of Traun, whilst our carriages are preparing.
[_They walk to the rock above the Fall of the Traun._]
HAL.—See, the cataract is now in great beauty; the river above is
coloured by the setting sun, and the glow of the rosy light on the upper
stream is beautifully and wonderfully contrasted with the tints of the
cataract below. Have you ever seen any thing so fine?
POIET.—The lights are beautiful; but I have certainly seen a finer
combination of features in the Fall of the Velino, at Terni, though that
water is not clear; but, even with this defect, it is certainly the most
perfect of European falls. This cascade of the Traun, though not so
elevated as that of Terni, and not so large as that of Schaffhausen,
yet, from its perfect clearness, and the harmony of the surrounding
objects, ranks high, as to picturesque effect, amongst the waterfalls of
Europe; and the wonderful transparency of its pale-green water gives it
a peculiar charm in my eyes, enhanced as it is now by the light of the
glowing western sky; and the tints of the quadrant iris on its spray are
not brighter than those of its stream and foam.
ORN.—We have now followed this water at least thirty miles, and wherever
we have seen it, it has always displayed the same characters of
clearness and rapidity—of green stream and white foam; and we have
traced it from the snowy mountains of Styria to the plains of Upper
Austria, where it serves to purify the darker Danube. How is it, that it
has preserved its transparency, though so many of its tributary streams
have been foul, either from the thunder storm, or from the sudden
melting of snows?
HAL.—The three small lakes and the two larger ones, which are in fact
its reservoirs, are the cause of this. The Gründtl See furnishes its
principal stream, and this lake is fed by two others—Töplitz See and
Lahngen See; and the tributary streams, which unite at Aussee, from
Alten Aussee and Oden See, though one is blue and the other yellow, yet
combine to give a tint, which is nearly the same as that from the stream
of the Gründtl See, and which the river retains throughout its course
Yet I have seen even this river very foul, but only in a part of its
course, below Ischel. I was once at that place, when the thunder storm
of a night having washed the dust of the roads into the river, it was
extremely turbid from Ischel to the Traun See. It rendered the upper
part of this large lake coloured; but, notwithstanding this, the river
came from the lower part of it perfectly clear, and I caught fish in it
there with a fly, which, at its entrance into the lake was quite
impossible.
POIET.—You, Halieus, must certainly have considered the _causes_ which
produce the colours of waters. The streams of our own island are of a
very different colour from these mountain rivers, and why should the
same element or substance assume such a variety of tints?
HAL.—I certainly have often thought upon the subject, and I have made
some observations and _one_ experiment in relation to it. I will give
you my opinion with pleasure, and, as far as I know, they have not been
brought forward in any of the works on the properties of water, or on
its consideration as a chemical element. The purest water with which we
are acquainted is undoubtedly that which falls from the atmosphere.
Having touched air alone, it can contain nothing but what it gains from
the atmosphere, and it is distilled without the chance of those
impurities, which may exist in the vessels used in an artificial
operation. We cannot well examine the water precipitated from the
atmosphere, as rain, without collecting it in vessels, and all
artificial contact gives more or less of contamination; but in snow,
melted by the sunbeams, that has fallen on glaciers, themselves formed
from frozen snow, water may be regarded as in its state of greatest
purity. Congelation expels both salts and air from water, whether
existing below, or formed in, the atmosphere; and in the high and
uninhabited regions of glaciers, there can scarcely be any substances to
contaminate. Removed from animal and vegetable life, they are even above
the mineral kingdom; and though there are instances in which the rudest
kind of vegetation (of the fungus or mucor kind) is even found upon
snows, yet this is a rare occurrence; and red snow, which is occasioned
by it, is an extraordinary and not a common phenomenon towards the pole,
and on the highest mountains of the globe. Having examined the water
formed from melted snow on glaciers in different parts of the Alps, and
having always found it of the same quality, I shall consider it as pure
water, and describe its characters. Its colour, when it has any depth,
or when a mass of it is seen through, is bright blue; and, according to
its greater or less depth of substance, it has more or less of this
colour: as its insipidity, and its other physical qualities, are not at
this moment objects of your inquiry, I shall not dwell upon them. In
general, in examining lakes and masses of water in high mountains, their
colour is of the same bright azure. And Captain Parry states, that the
water on the Polar ice has the like beautiful tint. When vegetables grow
in lakes, the colour becomes nearer the sea green, and as the quantity
of impregnation from their decay increases—greener, yellowish green, and
at length, when the vegetable extract is large in quantity—as in
countries where peat is found—yellow, and even brown. To mention
instances, the Lake of Geneva, fed from sources (particularly the higher
Rhone) formed from melting snow, is blue; and the Rhone pours from it,
dyed of the deepest azure, and retains partially this colour till it is
joined by the Soane, which gives to it a greener hue. The Lake of Morat,
on the contrary, which is fed from a lower country, and from less pure
sources, is grass green. And there is an illustrative instance in some
small lakes fed from the same source, in the road from Inspruck to
Stutgard, which I observed in 1815 (as well as I recollect) between
Nazareit and Reiti. The highest lake fed by melted snows in March, when
I saw it, was bright blue. It discharged itself by a small stream into
another, into which a number of large pines had been blown by a winter
storm, or fallen from some other cause: in this lake its colour was blue
green. In a third lake, in which there were not only pines and their
branches, but likewise other decaying vegetable matter, it had a tint of
faded grass green; and these changes had occurred in a space not much
more than a mile in length. These observations I made in 1815: on
returning to the same spot twelve years after, in August and September,
I found the character of the lakes entirely changed. The pine wood
washed into the second lake had disappeared; a large quantity of stones
and gravel, washed down by torrents, or detached by an avalanche,
supplied their place: there was no perceptible difference of tint in the
two upper lakes; but the lower one, where there was still some vegetable
matter, seemed to possess a greener hue. The same principle will apply
to the Scotch and Irish rivers, which, when they rise or issue from pure
rocky sources, are blue, or bluish green; and when fed from peat bogs,
or alluvial countries, yellow, or amber-coloured, or brown—even after
they have deposited a part of their impurities in great lakes.
Sometimes, though rarely, mineral impregnations give colour to water:
small streams are sometimes green or yellow from ferruginous
depositions. Calcareous matters seldom affect their colour, but often
their transparency, when deposited, as is the case with the Velino at
Terni, and the Anio at Trivoli; but I doubt if pure saline matters,
which are in themselves white, ever change the tint of water.
ORN.—On what then does the tint of the ocean depend, which has itself
given name to a colour?
HAL.—I think probably on vegetable matter, and, perhaps, partially, on
two elementary principles, iodine and brome, which it certainly
contains, though these are possibly the results of decayed marine
vegetables. These give a yellow tint, when dissolved in minute portions
in water, and this, mixed with the blue of pure water, would occasion
sea green. I made, many years ago, being on the _Mer de Glace_, an
experiment on this subject. I threw a small quantity of iodine, a
substance then recently discovered, into one of those deep blue basins
of water, which are so frequent on that glacier, and, diffusing it as it
dissolved with a stick, I saw the water change first to sea green in
colour, then to grass green, and lastly to yellowish green: I do not,
however, give this as a proof, but only as a fact favourable to my
conjecture.
POIET.—It appears to me to confirm your view of the subject, that snow
and ice, which are merely pure crystallized water, are always blue, when
seen by transmitted light. I have often admired the deep azure in
crevices in masses of snow in severe winters, and the same colour in the
glaciers of Switzerland, particularly at the arch where the Arve issues,
in the Valley of Chamouni. We thank you for your illustration.
HAL.—In return, I ask you for some further remarks on this grand
waterfall. You said just now, you preferred the fall of the Velino for
picturesque effect to any other waterfall you have seen; yet it is a
small river compared even with the Traun, and nothing compared with the
Gotha, the Rhine, or, above all, the Glommen.
POIET.—Size is merely comparative: I prefer the fall of the Velino,
because its parts are in harmony. It displays all the force and power of
the element, in its rapid and precipitous descent, and you feel, that
even man would be nothing in its waves, and would be dashed to pieces by
its force. The whole scene is embraced at once by the eye, and the
effect is almost as sublime as that of the Glommen, where the river is
at least one hundred times as large; for the Glommen falls, as it were,
from a whole valley upon a mountain of granite, and unless where you see
the giant pines of Norway, fifty or sixty feet in height, carried down
by it and swimming in its whirlpools like straws, you have no idea of
its magnitude and power: yet still, I think, considering it in all its
relations, this is the most awful fall of water I have seen, as that of
Velino is the most perfect and beautiful. I am not sure, that I ought
not to place the fall of the Gotha above that of the Rhine, both for
variety of effect and beauty; and the river, in my opinion, is quite as
large, and the colour of the water quite as beautiful.
HAL.—But our horses are ready, and the time of separation arrives. I
trust we shall all have a happy meeting in England in the winter. I have
made you idlers at home and abroad, but I hope to some purpose; and, I
trust, you will confess the time bestowed upon angling has not been
thrown away. The most important principle perhaps in life is to have a
pursuit—a useful one if possible, and at all events an innocent one. And
the scenes you have enjoyed—the contemplations to which they have led,
and the exercise in which we have indulged, have, I am sure, been very
salutary to the body, and, I hope, to the mind. I have always found a
peculiar effect from this kind of life; it has appeared to bring me back
to early times and feelings, and to create again the hopes and happiness
of youthful days.
PHYS.—I felt something like what you described, and were I convinced
that in the cultivation of the amusement, these feelings would increase,
I would devote myself to it with passion; but, I fear, in my case this
is impossible. Ah! could I recover any thing like that freshness of
mind, which I possessed at twenty-five, and which, like the dew of the
dawning morning, covered all objects and nourished all things that grew,
and in which they were more beautiful even than in mid-day
sunshine,—what would I not give!—All that I have gained in an active and
not unprofitable life. How well I remember that delightful season, when,
full of power, I sought for power in others; and power was sympathy, and
sympathy power;—when the dead and the unknown, the great of other ages
and of distant places, were made, by the force of the imagination, my
companions and friends;—when every voice seemed one of praise and love;
when every flower had the bloom and odour of the rose; and every spray
or plant seemed either the poet’s laurel, or the civic oak—which
appeared to offer themselves as wreaths to adorn my throbbing brow. But,
alas! this cannot be; and even you cannot have _two springs_ in
life—though I have no doubt you have fishing days, in which the feelings
of youth return, and that your autumn has a more _vernal_ character than
mine.
POIET.—I do not think Halieus had ever any season, except a perpetual
and gentle spring; for the tones of his mind have been always so quiet,
it has been so little scorched by sunshine, and so little shaken by
winds, that, I think, it may be compared to that sempivernal climate
fabled of the Hesperides, where the same trees produced at once buds,
leaves, blossoms, and fruits.
HAL.—Nay, my friends! spare me a little, spare my gray hairs. I have not
perhaps abused my youth so much as some of my friends, but all things
that you have known, I have known; and if I have not been so much
scorched by the passions from which so many of my acquaintances have
suffered, I owe it rather to the constant employment of a laborious
profession, and to the exertions called for by the hopes, wants, and
wishes of a rising family, than to any merits of my own, either moral or
constitutional. For my health, I may thank my ancestors, after my God,
and I have not squandered what was so bountifully given; and though I do
not expect, like our arch-patriarch, Walton, to number ninety years and
upwards, yet, I hope, as long as I can enjoy in a vernal day the warmth
and light of the sunbeams, still to haunt the streams—following the
example of our late venerable friend, the President of the Royal
academy,[9] in company with whom, when he was an octogenarian, I have
thrown the fly, caught trout, and enjoyed a delightful day of angling
and social amusement, in the shady green meadows by the bright clear
streams of the Wandle.
ADDITIONAL NOTES.
(_On the par, page 75._)
The author, in supposing that the par may be produced from a cross
between the river trout and the sea trout, does not mean to attach any
importance to this idea. The fish differs so little from the common
trout, that it may be questioned, whether it is not more entitled to the
character of a variety than of a species. In many rivers on the
continent, the author has seen small trout with olive or brown marks,
like those of the British par; and a friend informs him, that he has
caught fish of the same kind in the streams connected with the Lake of
Geneva. In rivers, flowing into the Danube, these small fish are very
common; but, as well as he remembers, their marks are pale, or
yellowish-brown, or olive, and not dark or blue like those of our par.
The salmon does not belong to any of these localities, but the hucho
haunts the tributary streams of the Danube. The smelts, or young of the
salmo hucho, and sea trout, and lake trout, are all distinguished by the
_uniform_ dark colour of the back, and the silvery whiteness of the
belly. He does not remember to have seen any of the streaked, or par
varieties of trout in rivers, in which there was only _one_ species, or
variety of large salmo. The mottled colour of the skin is, he thinks,
the strongest argument in favour of this little fish, being from a cross
of two varieties, or races, which may be the case, and yet the fish be
capable of breeding, and gaining this character of a peculiar variety;
and he supposes different kinds of pars may be produced by crosses of
the sea trout, the hucho, the lake trout, with the river trouts, or
perhaps of the salmon, and this would account for their great numbers,
and the various tints of the marks on their _sides_. If the hucho, as he
believes, generally spawns late in the winter, it may sometimes meet
with trout spawning at the same time. He has seen salmon and trout in
the Tweed in a similar state of maturity at the same period; and, in
1816, he remembers, that he took large female salmon, that had the
period of parturition protracted as late as March.
(_On the scolaphax, page 124._)