Page:Natural History, Fishes.djvu/33

Rh The grave would be abolished; this gay world, A valley of dry bones, a Golgotha, In which the living stumbled o'er the dead, Till they could fall no more, and blind perdition Swept frail mortality away for ever. 'Twas wisdom, mercy, goodness, that ordain'd Life in such infinite profusion,—Death, So sure, so prompt, so multiform, to those That never sinn'd, that know not guilt, that fear No wrath to come, and have no heaven to lose."

The voracity of Fishes is very great; there seems no limit to their appetite but the actual capacity of their stomach. Mr. Jesse tells of a Pike, to which he "threw, one after the other, five Roach, each about four inches in length. He swallowed four of them, and kept the fifth in his mouth for about a quarter of an hour, when it also disappeared." Digestion, however, is very rapid in predatory fishes; in a few hours not a single bone remains in the stomach or intestines of a Fish that has been swallowed. Mr. Frazer, in his "History of the Salmon," says, that he has found seven small Fishes in a Grilse (or young Salmon) of three pounds and a-half, and several Herrings in the body of Salmon, and that the digestion was so rapid that fire or water could not consume them more quickly. A remarkable example of the voracity of these animals is mentioned in the following extract from a lecture delivered before the Zoological Society of Dublin by Dr. Houston.

"This preparation (for the fidelity of which I can vouch, as it belongs to the Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons, and which may be taken as a fair average specimen of a Fish's breakfast party, captured at an early hour of the