scent came along like great blue shadows. Dorades got up in blue and silver, sacred to Venus, the eyes chased with a gold pencilling ; a precious species, but suited to either salt or fresh water, living in all climates and all temperatures, and though belonging to the geological era, have preserved all their pristine beauty. Magnificent sturgeons, ten or eleven yards long, of great speed, and knocking their powerful tails against the windows of the saloon, showed their bluish backs spotted with brown. They are like sharks, though inferior in strength, and are found in all seas. In the spring they like to ascend great rivers like the Volga, the Danube, the Po, the Rhine, the Loire, and Oder, living on herrings, mackerel, &c. But of the various inhabitants of the Mediterranean those which I could see best were of the sixty-third genus of osseous fishes. These were tunny, with blue-black backs. They are stated to follow ships in search of the refreshing shade from the fiery tropical sky, and they certainly proved the saying, for they followed the Nautilus just as they followed the ships of La Pérouse. For hours they emulated the speed of our ship. I could not help admiring them, they seemed so built for speed ; small head, lissome body, fins of great power, and forked tails. They swam in a triangle, as some birds fly. But with all their speed they do not escape the Provengals, and these blind and stupid yet precious creatures throw themselves by millions into the nets of the Marseillaises. I could quote numbers of other fish—gym notes, congers of four yards length, trygles, red mullet, the ocean “ bird of Paradise ;” and if I do not put down ballista, tertodrons, hippocampus, blennies, and numerous others, it is because the speed of the Nautilus made it impossible to note them accurately. I fancied I saw at the entrance to the Adriatic two or
VOL.II
