AT TABLE.
Orn.—Now the hucho is dressed, and on the same table with other species of the salmo, I perceive his peculiarities more distinctly; and, in addition to those you have mentioned, he appears to me to have a stronger upper jaw, and a larger projection of bone below the orbit of the eye.
Hal.—He has; and you will find a similar character in the pike and perch, and, I believe, in most fishes of prey; and the use of it seems to be, to strengthen the fulcrum of the lever on which the lower jaw moves, so as to afford the means of greater strength to the whole muscular apparatus, by means of which the fish seizes his prey.
Poiet.—These fishes, then, are analogous to the predatory animals of the feline genus, which have this part of the head exceedingly strong; and it is here that the craniologists or phrenologists fix the organ of courage: does not this extensive chain of analogies offer an argument in favour of this long agitated and generally unpopular doctrine?
Phys.—In my opinion, it offers, like most of the facts which have been brought forward to prove the truths of the view of Gall and Spurzheim, an argument rather unfavourable, when thoroughly and minutely examined.
Poiet.—How?
Phys.—In these rapacious and predatory animals, the organization of the 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.