[95] It is very questionable whether there is any foundation for the popular belief in the hostility of swine and of deer to the rattlesnake, and careful experiments as to the former quadruped seem to show that the supposed enmity is wholly imaginary. Observing that the starlings, stornelli, which bred in an old tower in Piedmont, carried something from their nests and dropped it upon the ground, about as often as they brought food to their young, I watched their proceedings, and found every day lying near the tower numbers of dead or dying slowworms, and, in a few cases, small lizards, which had, in every instance, lost about two inches of the tail. This part I believe the starlings gave to their nestlings, and threw away the remainder.
[96] Russell denies the existence of poisonous snakes in Northern Syria, and states that the last instance of death known to have occurred from the bite of a serpent near Aleppo took place a hundred years before his time. In Palestine, the climate, the thinness of population, the multitude of insects and of lizards, all circumstances, in fact, seem very favorable to the multiplication of serpents, but the venomous species, at least, are extremely rare, if at all known, in that country. I have, however, been assured by persons very familiar with Mount Lebanon, that cases of poisoning from the bite of snakes had occurred within a few years, near Hasbeiyeh, and at other places on the southern declivities of Lebanon and Hermon. In Egypt, on the other hand, the cobra, the asp, and the cerastes are as numerous as ever, and are much dreaded by all the natives, except the professional snake charmers. See Appendix, [No. 18].
[97] I use whale not in a technical sense, but as a generic term for all the large inhabitants of the sea popularly grouped under that name.
[98] From the narrative of Ohther, introduced by King Alfred into his translation of Orosius, it is clear that the Northmen pursued the whale fishery in the ninth century, and it appears, both from the poem called The Whale, in the Codex Exoniensis, and from the dialogue with the fisherman in the Colloquies of Aelfric, that the Anglo-Saxons followed this dangerous chase at a period not much later. I am not aware of any evidence to show that any of the Latin nations engaged in this fishery until a century or two afterward, though it may not be easy to disprove their earlier participation in it. In mediæval literature, Latin and Romance, very frequent mention is made of a species of vessel called in Latin, baleneria, balenerium, balenerius, balaneria, etc.; in Catalan, balener; in French, balenier; all of which words occur in many other forms. The most obvious etymology of these words would suggest the meaning, whaler, baleinier; but some have supposed that the name was descriptive of the great size of the ships, and others have referred it to a different root. From the fourteenth century, the word occurs oftener, perhaps, in old Catalan, than in any other language; but Capmany does not notice the whale fishery as one of the maritime pursuits of the very enterprising Catalan people, nor do I find any of the products of the whale mentioned in the old Catalan tariffs. The whalebone of the mediæval writers, which is described as very white, is doubtless the ivory of the walrus or of the narwhale.
[99] In consequence of the great scarcity of the whale, the use of coal gas for illumination, the substitution of other fatty and oleaginous substances, such as lard, palm oil, and petroleum, for right-whale oil and spermaceti, the whale fishery has rapidly fallen off within a few years. The great supply of petroleum, which is much used for lubricating machinery as well as for numerous other purposes, has produced a more perceptible effect on the whale fishery than any other single circumstance. According to Bigelow, Les États Unis en 1863, p. 346, the American whaling fleet was diminished by 29 in 1858, 57 in 1860, 94 in 1861, and 65 in 1862. The present number of American ships employed in that fishery is 353.
[100] The Origin and History of the English Language, &c., pp. 423, 424.
[101] Among the unexpected results of human action, the destruction or multiplication of fish, as well as of other animals, is a not unfrequent occurrence. I shall have occasion to mention on a following page the extermination of the fish in a Swedish river by a flood occasioned by the sudden discharge of the waters of a pond. Williams, in his History of Vermont, i, p. 149, quoted in Thompson's Natural History of Vermont, p. 142, records a case of the increase of trout from an opposite cause. In a pond formed by damming a small stream to obtain water power for a sawmill, and covering one thousand acres of primitive forest, the increased supply of food brought within reach of the fish multiplied them to that degree, that, at the head of the pond, where, in the spring, they crowded together in the brook which supplied it, they were taken by the hands at pleasure, and swine caught them without difficulty. A single sweep of a small scoopnet would bring up half a bushel, carts were filled with them as fast as if picked up on dry land, and in the fishing season they were commonly sold at a shilling (eightpence halfpenny, or about seventeen cents) a bushel. The increase in the size of the trout was as remarkable as the multiplication of their numbers.
[102] Babinet, Études et Lectures, ii, pp. 108, 110.
[103] Thompson, Natural History of Vermont, p. 38, and Appendix, p. 13. There is no reason to believe that the seal breeds in Lake Champlain, but the individual last taken there must have been some weeks, at least, in its waters. It was killed on the ice in the widest part of the lake, on the 23d of February, thirteen days after the surface was entirely frozen, except the usual small cracks, and a month or two after the ice closed at all points north of the place where the seal was found.
[104] See page 89, note, ante.