The ocean / By P. H. Gosse.

  • Gosse, Philip Henry, 1810-1888.
Date:
[pref. 1845]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The ocean / By P. H. Gosse. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    though so general a favourite, is the greedy devourer of other fishes smaller than itself. Yet, let us not arraign the providence of God, as if it were cruel and unkind: a sudden termination of existence is the most merciful mode, as far as we can conceive, by which the overflow of animal life could be checked. “ Harsh seems the ordinance, that life by life Should be sustain’d; and yet when all must die, And be like water spilt upon the ground, Which none can gather up,—the speediest fate, Though violent and terrible, is best. 0 with what horrors would creation groan, What agonies would ever be before us,— Famine and pestilence, disease, despair, Anguish and pain in every hideous shape, Had all to wait the slow decay of Nature ! Life were a martyrdom of sympathy ; Death, lingering, raging, writhing, shrieking torture; 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.”* Before we leave these charming regions, we will for a moment notice a few other of the various tribes of living beings that make the sea their home. A curious example of instinctive stratagem occurs in a little crab (Hyas ?) which is common upon the shore-reefs. It is about six inches in circum- * Pelican Island.