ruined people by imparting to their natures a ferocity not unlike that of the fish they pursued; that it was a dangerous pastime in which the hunters ran the risk of losing their lives, or at least their limbs; that it was wrong to destroy the shark on account of its usefulness in keeping down the excessive swarms of other fish, and in eating up the offal that fell into the sea; that all the efforts of the hunters could never produce any appreciable diminution of the number of sharks which swarmed round the reef; that finally, it was contrary to the principles of transcendental geography to slay sharks, as the books made no mention of sharks having been slain by the inhabitants of the unknown country. I need scarcely add, that the denunciations of this society had not the smallest appreciable effect in deterring persons from engaging in shark-hunts, which were indeed the most popular of all the pastimes of Colymbia.
Then there was a society which objected to the use of what they called contaminated air in the air-tubes, by which expression they meant its admixture with oxygen for breathing purposes, which had proved such a boon to the subaqueous inhabitants. Those worthy people contended that the air as it existed in the atmosphere was the proper air for man to breathe, and that its admixture with any foreign ingredient whatsoever was prejudicial, if not to the body, at all events to the mind of those who used it in that state. They proved by the experiments of chemists and physiologists that a candle would burn with frightful rapidity, and any animal would quickly die in an atmosphere of pure oxygen, that therefore it must be unfit for human beings even though
