What then must the number in the 3000 species that are known to exist!
The next class of animals in the scale of being forming a link between birds and fishes is the amphibian- that is animals subsisting in air or water. These include turtles and serpents and the species are less numerous than the birds amounting to not more than 400 (375 plus) probably less than 100 of these species are found in the U States.
We come now to the fish which as Moses informs us in the account of their creation, the waters brought forth abundantly after their kind. Of these not less than 1000 different species are known to exist, 3 or 4 hundred of which are found in the U. States. and of the immense numbers contained in these species we can form some opinions when we are informed on good authority that the shoals of the single species called herring which annually migrate from the northern ocean cover a surface not less than 130,000 square miles and are so thick that vessels are sometimes obstructed and stopped in passing through them. It is also stated by an eminent author that there are more animals in the milt of an individual of another species of fish than