146 ARCTIC CHIMERA. 



familiar name, the Rabbit Fish, that is chiefly known within 

 the icy waters of our northern circle of the world, and from 

 which it seldom wanders; so that its occurrence in the most 

 distant, in that direction, of the British Islands, is rare and 

 accidental; and consequently its scientific observers have been 

 few. Indeed, within its native seas it is said to come near 

 the surface only in the dark hours of the night, and therefore 

 it can only be by rare good fortune that its living manners 

 shall fall under the inspection of any one. For these reasons 

 we find ourselves compelled to lie under an obligation to two 

 or three of the students of nature for what we have to say 

 of this curious fish, as regards either its form or habits; and 

 of these we shall assign the preference to the French natu- 

 ralist Lacepede, which we do principally from the consideration 

 that he appears more than others to have observed and studied 

 it in its living condition. We have figures which probably 

 are correct on the whole in the works of Bloch and Dono- 

 van; but the colours are perhaps a little exaggerated, for 

 Gesner informs us that the drawing he had received from a 

 friend, and which formed the first announcement of this fish 

 to the world, was simply of a greenish tint. The figure by 

 Lacepede, which I copy, appears to answer more closely to 

 his description than either of the others above mentioned, and 

 it also more emphatically bears out the fanciful similitude of 

 the fabulous Chimsera of the ancient Greeks, from which 

 Linnaeus derived its scientific name. 



According to the French author above referred to, the 

 activity, in connection with the grotesqueness of the movements 

 of this fish, the flexibility of its very long and slender tail, its 

 manner of uncovering its teeth, and continually twisting about 

 the different portions of its flexible muzzle, forcibly call up 

 in the spectator's mind the grinning and absurd actions of the 

 monkey; while the singular form of its body, its long tail, 

 (much like that of a snake,) joined to a massy head which 

 resembles that of a lion, with the long first rays of its dorsal 

 tin representing in some sort the mane of that beast; to which 

 we add in the male a small elevated horn on the fore part 

 of the head, that is crested with a tuft of slender threads, 

 which may be supposed to represent the crown of the king of 

 beasts. The lineaments of the other parts of the body at 



