BLOCH ON THE SWORD-FISH. 



Statins Miiller, the skin is phosphorescent at night. Although sach large fishes are not usually 

 well flavored, this one is considered palatable. Pieces of the belly and the tail are especially 

 esteemed, aud hence they are expensive. The fins are salted and sold under the name ' caUo'. . . . 



".aSlian errs in saying that it enters fresh water, and in cataloguing it among the fishes of the 

 Danube." 



ALLUSIONS TO THE SWORD-FISH IN AMERICA BY EARLY WRITERS. The ancient city of 

 Siena, secluded and almost forgotten among the hills of Northern Italy, should have a peculiar 

 interest for Americans. Here Christopher Columbus was educated, and here, in the height of his 

 triumphs as a discoverer, he chose to deposit a memento of his first voyage across the seas. His 

 votive offering hangs over the portal of the old collegiate church, closed for many years, and rarely 



visited save by enterprising American tourists. It consists of the helmet and armor worn by the 



1 



discoverer when he first planted his feet on New World earth, his weapons, and the weapon of a 

 warrior killed by his party when approaching the American coast the sword of a Sword-fish. 1 



It is not probable that Columbus, or some of his crew, seafaring men of the Mediterranean, 

 had never seen the Sword-fish. Still, its sword was treasured up by them, aud has formed for 

 more than four centuries and a half a striking feature in the best preserved monument of the 

 discoverer of America. 



The earliest allusion in literature to the existence of the Sword-fish in the Western Atlantic 

 seems to occur in Josselyn's "Account of Two Voyages to New England," printed in 1674, in the 

 following passage: 



First Voyage : " The Twentieth day, we saw a great number of Sea-bats, or Owles, called 

 also flying fish, they are about the bigness of a Whiting, with four tinsel wings, with which they 

 fly as long as they are wet, when pursued by other fishes. Here likewise we saw many Grand 

 pisces, or Herring-hogs, hunting the scholes of Herrings, in the afternoon we saw a great fish 

 called the Vehuella or Sword-fish, having a long, strong and sharp finn like a Sword-blade on the 

 top of his head, with which he pierced our Ship, and broke it off with striving to get loose, one of 

 our Sailors dived and brought it aboard." 



A half century later I find a reference in Cateaby's work. 2 



Pennant, though aware of the statement made by Catesby, refuses the species a place in his 

 "List of the Fishes of North America," 3 supposing him to refer to the orca or high-finned killer- 

 whale: "I am not certain whether Catesby does not mean the high-finned Cachalot by his Sword- 

 fish; yet, as it is found in most seas, even to those of Ceylon (Mr. Sotur), I give it a place here." 



Catesby's testimony was soon confirmed by Dr. Alexander Garden. This enthusiastic col- 

 lector, through whose correspondence with Linnaeus so many of our Southern plants and animals 

 were first brought to knowledge and named, writes to John Ellis, from Charleston, South Carolina, 

 March 25, 1755: "I have sent you one of the rostrums of a fish found on the Florida coast, which 

 I take to be a species of the Ziphias rostr. apwe ensiforme, pinnia ventralibus nullis. 4 I have been 

 told that they are frequently found on the Carolina coast, though I have never seen any of them, 

 and I have been all along the coast to the Florida shore." 5 (Vol. i, p. 353.) 



1 For this fact, which I do not remember to have ever seen on record, I am indebted to Col. N. D. Wilkins, of 

 the Detroit Free Press, who visited the locality in 1879. 



'HistoriaNaturalis Carolina, &c., 17IS1. 



'Arctic Zoology, iii, 1784, p. 364. 



"The name by which this iish was desiguated in the earlier editions of Linnaeus's writings. 



*A Selection of the Correspondence of Linnaeus and other Naturalists, from the original manuscripts. By Sir 

 James Edward Smith, M. D., F. 11. S., &c., president of tin Linntean Society. In two volumes London. Printed 

 for Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme and Brown, Paternoster Row, 1821. 



