CIIONDROPTERYGI1. 637 



veracity is unimpeachable, and whom the colonel knows to 

 be a correct observer. He informed the colonel, that during 

 his last station in the Mediterranean, on a fine day, a blue 

 shark followed the ship, attracted, perhaps, by a corpse which 

 had been committed to the waves. After some time a shark- 

 hook, baited with pork, was flung out. The shark, attended by 

 four pilot-fish (Scomber ductorj, repeatedly approached the 

 bait, and, every time that he did so, one of the pilots pre- 

 ceding him, was distinctly seen, from the taffrail of the ship, 

 to run his snout against the side of the shark's head, to turn it 

 away. After some further play, the fish swam off, in the 

 wake of the vessel, his dorsal fin being long distinctly visible 

 above the water. When he had gone, however, a considera- 

 ble distance, he suddenly turned round, darted after the 

 vessel, and, before the pilot-fish could overtake him, and 

 interpose, snapped at the bait, and was taken. In hoisting 

 him up, one of the pilots was observed to cling to his side, 

 until he was half above water, when it fell off. All the pilot- 

 fishes then swam about awhile, as if in search of their friend, 

 with every apparent mark of anxiety and distress, and after- 

 wards darted suddenly down into the depths of the sea. The 

 colonel believes these observations on the pilot-fish to be 

 perfectly correct, as he has himself watched with intense 

 curiosity, an event in all respects precisely similar to the one 



now related. 



- 



A circumstance still more curious is noticed by Col. 

 Smith, and one, he thinks, hitherto unremarked in ichthy- 

 ology. Sometimes whole armies of these large fish are driven 

 on shore, by some cause not yet satisfactorily explained. 

 Several instances have occurred, of cetacea being stranded in 

 this manner, and occasionally, in very considerable numbers. 

 The same incident has taken place with regard to sharks. 

 A few years ago, so vast a shoal of sharks ran on shore in St. 

 Helena Bay, Cape of Good Hope, that Lieutenant Peddie, 



