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Corpasenti Webulance Directory 16
Page 01
The Anglo-Saxons commenced their career as pirates and robbers, and as pirates and robbers of the most desperate and dangerous description. In fact, the character which the Anglo-Saxons have obtained in modern times for energy and enterprise, and for desperate daring in their conflicts with foes, is no recent fame. The progenitors of the present race were celebrated every where, and every where feared and dreaded, not only in the days of Alfred, but several centuries before. All the historians of those days that speak of them at all, describe them as universally distinguished above their neighbors for their energy and vehemence of character, their mental and physical superiority, and for the wild and daring expeditions to which their spirit of enterprise and activity were continually impelling them. They built vessels, in which they boldly put forth on the waters of the German Ocean or of the Baltic Sea on excursions for conquest or plunder. Like their present posterity on the British isles and on the shores of the Atlantic, they cared not, in these voyages, whether it was summer or winter, calm or storm. In fact, they sailed often in tempests and storms by choice, so as to come upon their enemies the more unexpectedly.
The fresh-water mussels and snails and the crayfish burrow deep into the mud and silt at the bottom of ponds and streams where they lie motionless during the winter. The land snails, in late autumn, crawl beneath logs, and, burrowing deep into the soft mould, they withdraw far into their shells. Then each one forms with a mucous secretion two thin transparent membranes, one across the opening of the shell and one a little farther within, thus making the interior of the shell perfectly air-tight. There for five or six months he sleeps, free from the pangs of hunger and the blasts of winter, and when the balmy breezes of spring blow up from the south he breaks down and devours the protecting membrane and goes forth with his home on his back to seek fresh leaves for food and to find for himself a mate.
The common English pipe-fish is a good example of the other and much more usual case in which the father alone is actuated by a proper sense of parental responsibility. The pipe-fish, indeed, might almost be described as a pure and blameless rate-payer. No. 6 shows you the outer form of this familiar creature, whom you will recognize at a glance as still more nearly allied to the sea-horses than even the tube-mouth. Pipe-fishes are timid and skulking creatures. Like their horse-headed relations, they lurk for the most part among sea-weed for protection, and being but poor swimmers, never venture far from the covering shelter of their native thicket. But the curious part of them is that in this family the father fish is provided with a pouch even more perfect than that of the female tube-mouth, and that he himself, not his mate takes sole charge of the young, incubates them in his sack, and escorts them about for some time after hatching. The pouch, which is more fully represented in No. 7, is formed by a loose fold of skin arising from either side of the creature. In the illustration this fold is partly withdrawn, so as to show the young pipe-fish within their safe retreat after hatching out. It is said, I know not how truly, that the young fry will stroll out for an occasional swim on their own account, but will return at any threat of danger to their father's bosom, for a considerable time after the first hatching. This is just like what one knows of kangaroos and many other pouched mammals, where the mother's pouch becomes a sort of nursery, or place of refuge, to which the little ones return for warmth or safety after every excursion.
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