As regards those precious species which, foolishly, as well as cruelly, we have almost annihilated, and especially for that greatest and most precious life of all, the Whale, there should be an absolute peace, for at least half a century. That great, that really magnificent species, will then repair its losses. Being no longer persecuted, it will return to the temperate zone, which is its natural climate, where it will find its natural food in the abounding animalculæ of the comparatively warm waters. Being thus restored to its natural climate and its natural food, it will regain its old gigantic proportions. Let the old rendezvous of their Love be held sacred, and again we shall see the Leviathan, the whale of two or three hundred feet long. Let this magnificent creature's haunts be respected, especially in its breeding season, and in half a century it would be as plentiful as of old. Formerly it abounded in a bay of California. Why not make that bay sacred to it? Then it would not seek shelter among the horrid glaciers of the pole. Let us respect their reason of Love, and enormous will be the benefit to ourselves. Peace! I say again; peace for the Whale, the Sea-Cow, the Sea-Elephant; peace for all those precious species which man's inhumanity has so nearly crushed out of existence. A long, a sacred peace should be granted to them; like that which the Swiss so wisely granted to the Chamois, which, when almost extinct, was thus rendered numerous as ever. For all, whether Fish or Amphibii there is needed a season of perfect rest, like the _Truce of God_, which in the olden day prevented the chivalry of Europe from butchering each other. These creatures themselves instinctively comprehend what we either know not or neglect; for, at their season of maternity, they lose their timidity, and venture to our shores, as though certain that at such a season, they will be held sacred. At that season, they are in their greatest beauty a id their greatest strength. Their brilliant color and their flashing phosphorence indicate the utmost vigor of their existence, and in every species that is not menacingly superabundant, that season of reproduction should be respected. Kill them afterwards? By all means--but pray do not anticipatively kill in the one fish a whole shoal of fishes. Every unoffending creature has a right to the moment of happiness, to that moment when the individual, however lowly placed, goes beyond the narrow limits of his individual _Self_, and from his dark individuality, glances into and feels the Infinite Future. And let us aid Nature; then shall we be blessed, from the lowest depths to the starry heights; then shall we receive the blessing glance of that God who hath made both great and small, and who has commanded us to imitate Him. BOOK FOURTH. THE RESTORATION OF THE SEA. CHAPTER I. ORIGIN OF SEA BATHING.