Like Sanchez's piece, Wash delights in its own banality, its antitheatricality.

This self-gratulation is very natural; but it is not very just. The desire of knowledge is innate in human nature. We are all born more or less of a Paul Pry, and inherit a good dash of the temperament of our general mother.

The shallow waters immediately adjacent to California's 1200 miles of coastline offer a wide variety of habitats where at least 250 kinds of fishes live out all or some of their lives. … The eggs and larvae of some may drift seaward and lead a pelagic existence, but once their wanderlust is satisfied, the juveniles return to nearshore areas where they take up life as their parents did before them.

Some of the comedian's jokes failed to land.