across their track and waited for the event; and again and again it was proved that they always left the shore, sometimes ten or twelve hours before the coming storm.

Pilchards also, when near the shore, have the same knowledge imparted to them, and will flee from danger in the same manner. Then surface-feeding fishes, such as mackerel, pilchards, herrings, and scads, when out of danger in deep water, in the calms which generally precede storms, will begin to feed ravenously. At such times, the younger members of a crew are led to believe that masses of fish are around them, when it is nothing more than the few fishes which are in the sea in their immediate neighbourhood rushing through the surface to obtain quickly what little food may be there. The old men's version of it is that the fish are up against the weather.

Again, in fine weather, when a pollock, hake, or conger finds the fishermen's bait, it will be known by the nibble at the line that he is tasting his food before swallowing it; but when the storm is coming on, no time is allowed for tasting, for the bait is swallowed instantly, and the fish is off with a rush, and many fish are lost to the fishermen in consequence on such occasions. The younger men of the crew will complain that the fish are mad, and they have never known such capers before; while the older hands will remark: "Biting against the weather: don't you see the turks' heads in the clouds? there will be a gale before morning."

This excitement among the fishes before the coming storm clearly points to the circumstance that they are fully aware of what is approaching them, and prepare for the occasion; the feeding fish, well knowing that the storm will break up and destroy the connecting medium between their olfactories and their food, are anxious to take in a reserve to sustain them until communication can be again established.

That these fishes act resolutely on the first touch of this intimating sense is almost certain, for inattention might end in a merciless death, which may be inferred from the fact, that in one of last winter's gales, blowing directly on our coasts, I noted several of the Octopus Eledone and the Octopus Vulgaris beaten to death on our beach at Portmellon. If these creatures could not save themselves from destruction, with their powerful valved suckers clinching them to the rocks, where would such fishes have been without this safeguard?

This, again, brings me back to look at these mysterious lines, which in most fishes are seen running from the brain down the sides and meeting at the tail, and are known as the lateral lines.

Looking closely at these organs, we find the line consists in some instances of two tubes close together; and in others of two far apart; and in more than one of the Clupea family there are several such lines along the sides. In their construction they are divided into cells, consisting of jelly or mucus, having patches of sensitive hairs in them

here and there. These are the organs I so anxiously looked for, and I find them to be of the same character as those in the electrical ray; they are electrical instruments pure and simple, enclosing the whole fish, whereby the electrical knowledge collected is thrown into the brain.*

It may be urged that an electric sense in fishes is little other than an hypothesis or a suggestion, and that the foregoing statement is no proof that the tube is actually electric in its action; and this to some extent is true. Here, however, we are certainly in the same boat with all the scientists, who say that certain jelly cells in the back of the torpedo are an electrical apparatus, since no individual has yet been able to make an electric battery out of this mucus or jelly. Nor has any person, to our knowledge, been able to set this jelly machine in this fish's back in action to prove its electric character. In fact, it is only considered to be such from the actions of the animal possessing it. This is precisely our case respecting the electric force in one of the lateral lines of fishes. It may be asked, "How can the simple possession of a few electric cells without accessories be of any use to the fishes?" But having electric cells in the sea is very different from having them on the land. The torpedo ray has no wires to his instrument, but he has only to see the fish he desires as food in the distance, and by an effort of the will he can make them dead. This almost perfect expression of electric power has been in existence throughout the ages among these fishes, and man is only now discovering its first outlines. When the storms send their earth-currents along the deep, far ahead of their course, the fishes in the track with their electric cells catch the inspiration and instantly know whether it is a gale, storm, or tempest which is coming; and they act accordingly. It is nothing uncommon with sailors at sea to observe these electric indications at the masthead of ships before and during storms. These Corposants, or St. Elmo's fires, seem to be nothing more than electric currents interrupted in their course by the ship, and sent into the air by way of the masts. I have seen them several times: their light is

certain and distinct.

This brings me to consider the

MAGNETIC DERMAL SENSE

in fishes. And here I think I shall be able to demonstrate that in the lateral lines is another secret sense, which is mainly used in guiding and directing the inhabitants of this watery world.

* Mr. J. T. Cunningham, in his great work on the Sole, says of the tenth cranial nerve (nervus vagus) that the sixth branch is the nerve of the lateral line-it runs close above the vertebral centra on the ventral side of the band of connective tissue-and from this position it sends off nerves which supply the sense organs of the dermal canal of the lateral line. See page 71.

Consider the habits of fishes in their migrating and homing activi ties. That mackerel, herring, and pilchards swim without error to their desired spawning-beds, sheltered homes, and pleasant feedinggrounds I have shown in previous papers on this subject. Now, these fishes cannot, like man, have objects to guide them to their desired haven, in the shape of high lands, lights, and seamarks; nor can they be aided by telescopic sight in going these long distances, for in the obscure sea, as before shown, this is impossible; hence we conclude that some magnetic principle must assist in guiding them.

Thus pilchards, when migrating to their winter home in the English Channel, move as certainly by night as by day, keeping up the necessary course throughout. I have sailed for miles across their track at such times, with the compass before me, and observed that all were moving on the same point.

Surmullet also have their summer and winter homes. In the sunshine they live near the shore, their arbour being under some projecting ledge or rock near an expanse of sand: the first is their spawning-bed, the second their feeding-ground. With the autumn they depart for their winter home—a trackless journey, from twenty to fifty miles out, across the great plain at the bottom of the English Channel. It would be a most difficult passage for a human being to undertake without chart or compass; we might well think it impossible when it is considered that the expanse is without cape or promontory to serve as a guide for the voyage, or any means of external intimation when going either inwards or outwards, east or west. But not only is the journey comfortably accomplished by the mullet every year, but in the following spring, when, going back into the sunlight, a seemingly greater difficulty is undertaken: all that dark and misty grovelling on the sea bottom associated with their outward migration is given up, and, rising to the surface in the night, they boldly stretch out for the shore. Often this story is unwittingly told by the surmullet in their night journey by meshing in our fishermen's mackerel nets.

The boar fish act much on the same lines as the surmullet, rising near the surface of the sea when, for breeding purposes, they migrate towards land; sometimes by night they will mesh by the thousand in the pilchard nets here.

Then we have the turbot, brill, sole, and many other fishes, which will rush out into the depths of the English Channel and take up winter quarters there; but with the spring, on their return visit to the shore, they, too, will leave the mists and shades of the bottom and mount to the upper regions of the sea, and move away towards the land and its summer pleasures.

With these facts before us I think it is clear that besides electricity, magnetism, to a high degree, is a fixed principle, and plays an impor

tant part in the life history of most of our fishes. But whether the magnetism reaches them on primary or secondary lines at this moment it is difficult to say; I lean rather to the secondary expression, or that shown to be stretching from the shores only.

Mr. Thomas Clark, of Truro, our Cornish magnetist, states that all basic rocks are highly magnetic. They are found at the Manacles, Cape Cornwall, Padstow, and many other places in and out of the county; and further, that the magnetic power of such rocks is intensified by friction. Thus the basic beaches brought into motion by storms increase their magnetic power to an almost incalculable degree, of which he gives ample proof. Hence, he infers, it often affects the compasses of passing ships, and in fogs leads them on to destruction.

Scientists are not surprised at this discovery, for it has long been known that rocky coast-lines and headlands are surrounded by a highly electrified atmosphere, and all know how closely electricity and magnetism are associated. These facts point to the probability of all shores being more or less magnetic, even under the influence of the most gentle breezes. Hence it is interesting to think that these magnetiferous headlands have another and brighter side, and may be the means by which the inhabitants of the sea find their way from winter and tempest to shelter and rest; and when the spring advances direct them back to sunshine and their summer homes.

No doubt the intricacies of the compass are too much for the comprehension of these fishes; but they may have a magnetic indication suitable to their apprehension, on the lines of sight or smell, which may impress them as to the whereabouts of the headlands, and consequently of the vicinity of the sea shore. I can understand the possibility of the idea being objected to because the creatures have no metals from which such a talisman could be built up; but the same kind of objection can be raised respecting the formation of an electric battery in the back of the electric ray.

And in this instance may not the brain itself, assisted by the dermal magnetic tube, be a substitute for the loadstone? For this organ is to a great extent constructed on the same lines as Lord, Kelvin's latest compass invention-viz., a magnet floating in liquid. I have opened the skulls of several fishes at death, and have found the brain in the cranium floating in a fine, clear, tasteless fluid, of about the consistency of water, which, with the brain, in many instances completely fills the brainpan.

MATTHIAS DUNN.

"AS ESTABLISHED BY LAW.”

I

I.

OBSERVE that those who agree with Mr. Round's article in the June number of this REVIEW describe him as an "expert" on the question on which he has written. I propose to test his qualifications, and, without any preliminaries, I come at once to close quarters with his argument in so far as it concerns myself. He cites the following (I modernise the spelling) from Elizabeth's Act of Supremacy :

"That such jurisdictions, privileges, superiorities, and pre-eminences, spiritual and ecclesiastical, as by any spiritual or ecclesiastical power or authority hath heretofore been or may lawfully be exercised or used for the visitation of the ecelesiastical state or persons, and for reformation, order, and coercion of the same and of all manner of errors, heresies, schisms, abuses, &c. .. shall for ever by authority of the present Parliament be united and annexed to the Imperial Crown of this realm."

.

I quote this extract with all the emphasis of Mr. Round's italics, for it furnishes us with an admirable test of Mr. Round's qualifications as an interpreter of statutes. He calls his quotation "the essential clause" of the statute, and accuses Sir George Arthur of bad faith for having omitted it. But it is Mr. Round who has omitted the essential part of the statute, a part which gives a totally different complexion to the passage to which he has appealed. The title of the statute is:

"An Act to restore to the Crown the ancient jurisdiction over the estate ecclesiastical and spiritual, and abolishing all foreign powers repugnant to the same."

The preamble says:

In time of the reign of your most dear father, King Henry the Eighth,