mates would be upon him.  Sometimes two would get the same morsel, and there would be a trial of strength, accompanied with much flash and glitter of shining scales.  But no matter how called off, their interest and curiosity remained with the diver.  They would return, pushing their noses about him, caressingly in appearance if not intent, and bob into the treasures of worm and shellfish his labor exposed.  He became convinced that they were sportive, indulging in dash and play for the fun of it, rather than for any grosser object to be attained.

This curious intimacy was continued for weeks:  the fish, unless driven away by some rover of prey of their kind, were in regular attendance during his hours of work.  Perhaps the solitude and silence of that curious submarine world strengthened the impression of recognition and intimacy, but by every criterion we usually accept in terrestrial creation these little creatures had an interest and a friendly feeling for one who furnished them food, and who was always careful to avoid injuring them or giving them any unnecessary alarm.  He could not, of course, take up a fish in his hand, any more than a chicken will submit to handling; but as to the comparative tameness of the two, the fish is more approachable than the chicken.  That they knew and expected the diver at the usual hour was a conclusion impossible to deny, as also that they grew into familiarity with him, and were actuated by an intelligent recognition of his service to them.  It would be hard to convince this gentleman that a school of fish cannot be as readily and completely tamed as a flock of chickens.

Why not?  The fear of man is no instinctive feeling in the invertebrate creation.  The pioneer who penetrates into the uninhabited wilds of our Western frontier finds bird and beast fearless and familiar.  Man’s cruelty is a lesson of experience.  The timid and fearful of the lower creation belong to creatures of prey.  The shark, for example, is as cowardly as the wolf.

I thought to speak of other marine creations with which the diver grows acquainted, finding in them only a repetition of the same degree of life he has seen in the upper world.  But let it be enough to state the conclusion—­as yet only an impression, and perhaps never to be more—­that in marine existence there is to be found the counterpart always of some animate existence on earth, invertebrate or radiate, in corresponding animals or insects, between whose habits and modes of existence strong analogies are found.  The shrimps that hang in clusters on your hand under the water are but winged insects of the air in another frame that have annoyed you on the land.

Let me dismiss the subject with the brief account of a diver caught in a trap.

In the passion of blind destruction that followed and attended the breaking out of hostilities between the North and the South, as a child breaks his rival’s playthings, the barbarism of war destroyed the useful improvements of civilization.  Among the things destroyed by this iconoclastic fury was the valuable dry-dock in Pensacola Bay.  It was burned to the water’s edge, and sunk.  A company was subsequently organized to rescue the wreck, and in the course of the submarine labor occurred the incident to which I refer.