fish

59:4.1In the age­long strug­gle be­tween land and wa­ter, for long pe­ri­ods the sea has been com­par­a­tively vic­to­ri­ous, but times of land vic­tory are just ahead. And the con­ti­nen­tal drifts have not pro­ceeded so far but that, at times, prac­ti­cally all of the land of the world is con­nected by slen­der isth­muses and nar­row land bridges.

59:4.2As the land emerges from the last Sil­urian in­un­da­tion, an im­por­tant pe­riod in world de­vel­op­ment and life evo­lu­tion comes to an end. It is the dawn of a new age on earth. The naked and unattrac­tive land­scape of for­mer times is be­com­ing clothed with lux­u­ri­ant ver­dure, and the first mag­nif­i­cent forests will soon ap­pear.

59:4.3The ma­rine life of this age was very di­verse due to the early species seg­re­ga­tion, but later on there was free com­min­gling and as­so­ci­a­tion of all these dif­fer­ent types. The bra­chiopods early reached their cli­max, be­ing suc­ceeded by the arthro­pods, and bar­na­cles made their first ap­pear­ance. But the great­est event of all was the sud­den ap­pear­ance of the fish fam­ily. This be­came the age of fishes, that pe­riod of the world’s his­tory char­ac­ter­ized by the ver­te­brate type of an­i­mal.

59:4.4270,000,000 years ago the con­ti­nents were all above wa­ter. In mil­lions upon mil­lions of years not so much land had been above wa­ter at one time; it was one of the great­est land-emer­gence epochs in all world his­tory.

59:4.5Five mil­lion years later the land ar­eas of North and South Amer­ica, Eu­rope, Africa, north­ern Asia, and Aus­tralia were briefly in­un­dated, in North Amer­ica the sub­mer­gence at one time or an­other be­ing al­most com­plete; and the re­sult­ing lime­stone lay­ers run from 500 to 5,000 feet in thick­ness. These var­i­ous De­vo­nian seas ex­tended first in one di­rec­tion and then in an­other so that the im­mense arc­tic North Amer­i­can in­land sea found an out­let to the Pa­cific Ocean through north­ern Cal­i­for­nia.

59:4.6260,000,000 years ago, to­ward the end of this land-de­pres­sion epoch, North Amer­ica was par­tially over­spread by seas hav­ing si­mul­ta­ne­ous con­nec­tion with the Pa­cific, At­lantic, Arc­tic, and Gulf wa­ters. The de­posits of these later stages of the first De­vo­nian flood av­er­age about one thou­sand feet in thick­ness. The coral reefs char­ac­ter­iz­ing these times in­di­cate that the in­land seas were clear and shal­low. Such coral de­posits are ex­posed in the banks of the Ohio River near Louisville, Ken­tucky, and are about one hun­dred feet thick, em­brac­ing more than two hun­dred va­ri­eties. These coral for­ma­tions ex­tend through Canada and north­ern Eu­rope to the arc­tic re­gions.

59:4.7Fol­low­ing these sub­mer­gences, many of the shore lines were con­sid­er­ably el­e­vated so that the ear­lier de­posits were cov­ered by mud or shale. There is also a red sand­stone stra­tum which char­ac­ter­izes one of the De­vo­nian sed­i­men­ta­tions, and this red layer ex­tends over much of the earth’s sur­face, be­ing found in North and South Amer­ica, Eu­rope, Rus­sia, China, Africa, and Aus­tralia. Such red de­posits are sug­ges­tive of arid or semi­arid con­di­tions, but the cli­mate of this epoch was still mild and even.

59:4.8Through­out all of this pe­riod the land south­east of the Cincin­nati Is­land re­mained well above wa­ter. But very much of west­ern Eu­rope, in­clud­ing the British Isles, was sub­merged. In Wales, Ger­many, and other places in Eu­rope the De­vo­nian rocks are 20,000 feet thick.

59:4.9250,000,000 years ago wit­nessed the ap­pear­ance of the fish fam­ily, the ver­te­brates, one of the most im­por­tant steps in all pre­hu­man evo­lu­tion.

59:4.10The arthro­pods, or crus­taceans, were the an­ces­tors of the first ver­te­brates. The fore­run­ners of the fish fam­ily were two mod­i­fied arthro­pod an­ces­tors; one had a long body con­nect­ing a head and tail, while the other was a back­bone­less, jaw­less pre­fish. But these pre­lim­i­nary types were quickly de­stroyed when the fishes, the first ver­te­brates of the an­i­mal world, made their sud­den ap­pear­ance from the north.

59:4.11Many of the largest true fish be­long to this age, some of the teeth-bear­ing va­ri­eties be­ing twenty-five to thirty feet long; the pres­ent-day sharks are the sur­vivors of these an­cient fishes. The lung and ar­mored fishes reached their evo­lu­tion­ary apex, and be­fore this epoch had ended, fishes had adapted to both fresh and salt wa­ters.

59:4.12Ver­i­ta­ble bone beds of fish teeth and skele­tons may be found in the de­posits laid down to­ward the close of this pe­riod, and rich fos­sil beds are sit­u­ated along the coast of Cal­i­for­nia since many shel­tered bays of the Pa­cific Ocean ex­tended into the land of that re­gion.

59:4.13The earth was be­ing rapidly over­run by the new or­ders of land veg­e­ta­tion. Here­to­fore few plants grew on land ex­cept about the wa­ter’s edge. Now, and sud­denly, the pro­lific fern fam­ily ap­peared and quickly spread over the face of the rapidly ris­ing land in all parts of the world. Tree types, two feet thick and forty feet high, soon de­vel­oped; later on, leaves evolved, but these early va­ri­eties had only rudi­men­tary fo­liage. There were many smaller plants, but their fos­sils are not found since they were usu­ally de­stroyed by the still ear­lier ap­pear­ing bac­te­ria.

59:4.14As the land rose, North Amer­ica be­came con­nected with Eu­rope by land bridges ex­tend­ing to Green­land. And to­day Green­land holds the re­mains of these early land plants be­neath its man­tle of ice.

59:4.15240,000,000 years ago the land over parts of both Eu­rope and North and South Amer­ica be­gan to sink. This sub­si­dence marked the ap­pear­ance of the last and least ex­ten­sive of the De­vo­nian floods. The arc­tic seas again moved south­ward over much of North Amer­ica, the At­lantic in­un­dated a large part of Eu­rope and west­ern Asia, while the south­ern Pa­cific cov­ered most of In­dia. This in­un­da­tion was slow in ap­pear­ing and equally slow in re­treat­ing. The Catskill Moun­tains along the west bank of the Hud­son River are one of the largest ge­o­logic mon­u­ments of this epoch to be found on the sur­face of North Amer­ica.

59:4.16230,000,000 years ago the seas were con­tin­u­ing their re­treat. Much of North Amer­ica was above wa­ter, and great vol­canic ac­tiv­ity oc­curred in the St. Lawrence re­gion. Mount Royal, at Mon­treal, is the eroded neck of one of these vol­ca­noes. The de­posits of this en­tire epoch are well shown in the Ap­palachian Moun­tains of North Amer­ica where the Susque­hanna River has cut a val­ley ex­pos­ing these suc­ces­sive lay­ers, which at­tained a thick­ness of over 13,000 feet.

59:4.17The el­e­va­tion of the con­ti­nents pro­ceeded, and the at­mo­sphere was be­com­ing en­riched with oxy­gen. The earth was over­spread by vast forests of ferns one hun­dred feet high and by the pe­cu­liar trees of those days, silent forests; not a sound was heard, not even the rus­tle of a leaf, for such trees had no leaves.

59:4.18And thus drew to a close one of the longest pe­ri­ods of ma­rine-life evo­lu­tion, the age of fishes. This pe­riod of the world’s his­tory lasted al­most fifty mil­lion years; it has be­come known to your re­searchers as the De­vo­nian.

• sudden appearance

59:5.8Two groups of echin­o­derms be­came es­pe­cially well de­vel­oped, and they are in re­al­ity the guide fos­sils of this epoch. The large shell-feed­ing sharks were also highly evolved, and for more than five mil­lion years they dom­i­nated the oceans. The cli­mate was still mild and equable; the ma­rine life was lit­tle changed. Fresh-wa­ter fish were de­vel­op­ing and the trilo­bites were near­ing ex­tinc­tion. Corals were scarce, and much of the lime­stone was be­ing made by the crinoids. The finer build­ing lime­stones were laid down dur­ing this epoch.

• sea serpents threatened destruction of all

60:2.9110,000,000 years ago the po­ten­tials of ma­rine life were con­tin­u­ing to un­fold. The sea urchin was one of the out­stand­ing mu­ta­tions of this epoch. Crabs, lob­sters, and the mod­ern types of crus­taceans ma­tured. Marked changes oc­curred in the fish fam­ily, a stur­geon type first ap­pear­ing, but the fe­ro­cious sea ser­pents, de­scended from the land rep­tiles, still in­fested all the seas, and they threat­ened the de­struc­tion of the en­tire fish fam­ily.

• Neanderthalers speared f. at ice vents

64:4.4750,000 years ago the fourth ice sheet was well on its way south. With their im­proved im­ple­ments the Ne­an­derthalers made holes in the ice cov­er­ing the north­ern rivers and thus were able to spear the fish which came up to these vents. Ever these tribes re­treated be­fore the ad­vanc­ing ice, which at this time made its most ex­ten­sive in­va­sion of Eu­rope.

• sudden appearance

65:2.5Be­fore long the early sin­gle-celled an­i­mal types as­so­ci­ated them­selves in com­mu­ni­ties, first on the plan of the Volvox and pres­ently along the lines of the Hy­dra and jel­ly­fish. Still later there evolved the starfish, stone lilies, sea urchins, sea cu­cum­bers, cen­tipedes, in­sects, spi­ders, crus­taceans, and the closely re­lated groups of earth­worms and leeches, soon fol­lowed by the mol­lusks—the oys­ter, oc­to­pus, and snail. Hun­dreds upon hun­dreds of species in­ter­vened and per­ished; men­tion is made only of those which sur­vived the long, long strug­gle. Such non­pro­gres­sive spec­i­mens, to­gether with the later ap­pear­ing fish fam­ily, to­day rep­re­sent the sta­tion­ary types of early and lower an­i­mals, branches of the tree of life which failed to pro­gress.

65:2.6The stage was thus set for the ap­pear­ance of the first back­boned an­i­mals, the fishes. From this fish fam­ily there sprang two unique mod­i­fi­ca­tions, the frog and the sala­man­der. And it was the frog which be­gan that se­ries of pro­gres­sive dif­fer­en­ti­a­tions in an­i­mal life that fi­nally cul­mi­nated in man him­self.

• last phyla to have appeared

65:2.11Only four­teen phyla have ap­peared on Uran­tia, the fishes be­ing the last, and no new classes have de­vel­oped since birds and mam­mals.

• early units of barter

69:4.5The first weights were grains of wheat and other ce­re­als. The first medium of ex­change was a fish or a goat. Later the cow be­came a unit of barter.

• in Jesus’ ministry › if your child needs a

144:2.4“Which of you who is a fa­ther, if his son asks un­wisely, would hes­i­tate to give in ac­cor­dance with pa­ren­tal wis­dom rather than in the terms of the son’s faulty pe­ti­tion? If the child needs a loaf, will you give him a stone just be­cause he un­wisely asks for it? If your son needs a fish, will you give him a wa­ter­snake just be­cause it may chance to come up in the net with the fish and the child fool­ishly asks for the ser­pent? If you, then, be­ing mor­tal and fi­nite, know how to an­swer prayer and give good and ap­pro­pri­ate gifts to your chil­dren, how much more shall your heav­enly Fa­ther give the spirit and many ad­di­tional bless­ings to those who ask him? Men ought al­ways to pray and not be­come dis­cour­aged.

145:1.1On Fri­day morn­ing of this same week, when Je­sus was teach­ing by the sea­side, the peo­ple crowded him so near the wa­ter’s edge that he sig­naled to some fish­er­men oc­cu­py­ing a near-by boat to come to his res­cue. En­ter­ing the boat, he con­tin­ued to teach the as­sem­bled mul­ti­tude for more than two hours. This boat was named “Si­mon”; it was the for­mer fish­ing ves­sel of Si­mon Pe­ter and had been built by Je­sus’ own hands. On this par­tic­u­lar morn­ing the boat was be­ing used by David Zeb­e­dee and two as­so­ciates, who had just come in near shore from a fruit­less night of fish­ing on the lake. They were clean­ing and mend­ing their nets when Je­sus re­quested them to come to his as­sis­tance.

145:1.2Af­ter Je­sus had fin­ished teach­ing the peo­ple, he said to David: “As you were de­layed by com­ing to my help, now let me work with you. Let us go fish­ing; put out into yon­der deep and let down your nets for a draught.” But Si­mon, one of David’s as­sis­tants, an­swered: “Mas­ter, it is use­less. We toiled all night and took noth­ing; how­ever, at your bid­ding we will put out and let down the nets.” And Si­mon con­sented to fol­low Je­sus’ di­rec­tions be­cause of a ges­ture made by his mas­ter, David. When they had pro­ceeded to the place des­ig­nated by Je­sus, they let down their nets and en­closed such a mul­ti­tude of fish that they feared the nets would break, so much so that they sig­naled to their as­so­ciates on the shore to come to their as­sis­tance. When they had filled all three boats with fish, al­most to sink­ing, this Si­mon fell down at Je­sus’ knees, say­ing, “De­part from me, Mas­ter, for I am a sin­ful man.” Si­mon and all who were con­cerned in this episode were amazed at the draught of fishes. From that day David Zeb­e­dee, this Si­mon, and their as­so­ciates for­sook their nets and fol­lowed Je­sus.

145:1.3But this was in no sense a mirac­u­lous draught of fishes. Je­sus was a close stu­dent of na­ture; he was an ex­pe­ri­enced fish­er­man and knew the habits of the fish in the Sea of Gal­i­lee. On this oc­ca­sion he merely di­rected these men to the place where the fish were usu­ally to be found at this time of day. But Je­sus’ fol­low­ers al­ways re­garded this as a mir­a­cle.

• in Jesus’ ministry › feeding 5000 with 2

152:2.7Be­fore the apos­tles had an op­por­tu­nity to ex­press them­selves, Je­sus turned to An­drew and Philip, say­ing: “I do not want to send these peo­ple away. Here they are, like sheep with­out a shep­herd. I would like to feed them. What food have we with us?” While Philip was con­vers­ing with Mat­thew and Ju­das, An­drew sought out the Mark lad to as­cer­tain how much was left of their store of pro­vi­sions. He re­turned to Je­sus, say­ing: “The lad has left only five bar­ley loaves and two dried fishes”—and Pe­ter promptly added, “We have yet to eat this evening.”

152:2.8For a mo­ment Je­sus stood in si­lence. There was a far­away look in his eyes. The apos­tles said noth­ing. Je­sus turned sud­denly to An­drew and said, “Bring me the loaves and fishes.” And when An­drew had brought the bas­ket to Je­sus, the Mas­ter said: “Di­rect the peo­ple to sit down on the grass in com­pa­nies of one hun­dred and ap­point a leader over each group while you bring all of the evan­ge­lists here with us.”

152:2.9Je­sus took up the loaves in his hands, and af­ter he had given thanks, he broke the bread and gave to his apos­tles, who passed it on to their as­so­ciates, who in turn car­ried it to the mul­ti­tude. Je­sus in like man­ner broke and dis­tributed the fishes. And this mul­ti­tude did eat and were filled. And when they had fin­ished eat­ing, Je­sus said to the dis­ci­ples: “Gather up the bro­ken pieces that re­main over so that noth­ing will be lost.” And when they had fin­ished gath­er­ing up the frag­ments, they had twelve bas­ket­fuls. They who ate of this ex­traor­di­nary feast num­bered about five thou­sand men, women, and chil­dren.

• in Jesus’ ministry › with shekel in its mouth

157:1.4It is not strange that you have a rec­ord of Pe­ter’s catch­ing a fish with a shekel in its mouth. In those days there were cur­rent many sto­ries about find­ing trea­sures in the mouths of fishes; such tales of near mir­a­cles were com­mon­place. So, as Pe­ter left them to go to­ward the boat, Je­sus re­marked, half-hu­mor­ously: “Strange that the sons of the king must pay trib­ute; usu­ally it is the stranger who is taxed for the up­keep of the court, but it be­hooves us to af­ford no stum­bling block for the au­thor­i­ties. Go hence! maybe you will catch the fish with the shekel in its mouth.” Je­sus hav­ing thus spo­ken, and Pe­ter so soon ap­pear­ing with the tem­ple tax, it is not sur­pris­ing that the episode be­came later ex­panded into a mir­a­cle as re­corded by the writer of Mat­thew’s Gospel.

• in Jesus’ ministry › risen Jesus directed apostles cast net for

192:1.3As they dropped an­chor and pre­pared to en­ter the small boat for go­ing ashore, the man on the beach called to them, “Lads, have you caught any­thing?” And when they an­swered, “No,” he spoke again. “Cast the net on the right side of the boat, and you will find fish.” While they did not know it was Je­sus who had di­rected them, with one ac­cord they cast in the net as they had been in­structed, and im­me­di­ately it was filled, so much so that they were hardly able to draw it up. Now, John Zeb­e­dee was quick of per­cep­tion, and when he saw the heavy-laden net, he per­ceived that it was the Mas­ter who had spo­ken to them. When this thought came into his mind, he leaned over and whis­pered to Pe­ter, “It is the Mas­ter.” Pe­ter was ever a man of thought­less ac­tion and im­petu­ous de­vo­tion; so when John whis­pered this in his ear, he quickly arose and cast him­self into the wa­ter that he might the sooner reach the Mas­ter’s side. His breth­ren came up close be­hind him, hav­ing come ashore in the small boat, haul­ing the net of fishes af­ter them.

• in Jesus’ ministry › risen Jesus directed apostles cast net for

192:1.7Pe­ter then joined his com­rades as they hauled in the net. When they had landed their catch, they counted the fish, and there were 153 large ones. And again was the mis­take made of call­ing this an­other mirac­u­lous catch of fish. There was no mir­a­cle con­nected with this episode. It was merely an ex­er­cise of the Mas­ter’s pre­knowl­edge. He knew the fish were there and ac­cord­ingly di­rected the apos­tles where to cast the net.

192:1.8Je­sus spoke to them, say­ing: “Come now, all of you, to break­fast. Even the twins should sit down while I visit with you; John Mark will dress the fish.” John Mark brought seven good-sized fish, which the Mas­ter put on the fire, and when they were cooked, the lad served them to the ten. Then Je­sus broke the bread and handed it to John, who in turn served it to the hun­gry apos­tles. When they had all been served, Je­sus bade John Mark sit down while he him­self served the fish and the bread to the lad. And as they ate, Je­sus vis­ited with them and re­counted their many ex­pe­ri­ences in Gal­i­lee and by this very lake.