ns
themselves, and very hard indeed to reconcile with the orthodox belief
that they are not flying at all, but only jumping. I don't know whether
the flying gurnards are good eating or not; but the silvery flying fish
are caught for market (sad desecration of the poetry of nature!) in the
Windward Islands, and when nicely fried in egg and bread-crumb are
really quite as good for practical purposes as smelts or whiting or any
other prosaic European substitute.

On the whole, it will be clear, I think, to the impartial reader from
this rapid survey that the helplessness and awkwardness of a fish out of
water has been much exaggerated by the thoughtless generalisation of
unscientific humanity. Granting, for argument's sake, that most fish
prefer the water, as a matter of abstract predilection, to the dry land,
it must be admitted _per contra_ that many fish cut a much better figure
on terra firma than most of their critics themselves would cut in
mid-ocean. There are fish that wriggle across country intrepidly with
the dexterity and agility of the most accomplished snakes; there are
fish that walk about on open sand-banks, semi-erect on two legs, as
easily as lizards; there are fish that hop and skip on tail and fins in
a manner that the celebrated jumping frog himself might have observed
with envy; and there are fish that fly through the air of heaven with a
grace and swiftness that would put to shame innumerable species among
their feathered competitors. Nay, there are even fish, like some kinds
of eels and the African mud-fish, that scarcely live in the water at
all, but merely frequent wet and marshy places, where they lie snugly in
the soft ooze and damp earth that line the bottom. If I have only
succeeded, therefore, in relieving the mind of one sensitive and
retiring fish from the absurd obloquy cast upon its appearance when it
ventures away for awhile from its proper element, then, in the pathetic
and prophetic words borrowed from a thousand uncut prefaces, this work
will not, I trust, have been written in vain.

THE FIRST POTTER

Collective humanity owes a great debt of gratitude to the first potter.
Before his days the art of boiling, though in one sense very simple and
primitive indeed, was in another sense very complex, cumbersome, and
lengthy. The unsophisticated savage, having duly speared and killed his
antelope, proceeded to light a roaring fire, with flint or drill, by the
side of some convenien