654 SUPPLEMENT ON 



ous, but its size seems dependent on that of the indi- 

 vidual. It is rather flatted, and serrated on each side with 

 barbs and hooks recurved towards the base of the weapon. 

 This tremendous weapon the animal seems capable of striking 

 with the swiftness of an arrow into its prey or its enemy, 

 whose destruction and capture is further insured by the folds 

 of the flagelliform tail, which are immediately twisted round 

 it. It may easily be conceived, that a wound from this animal, 

 inflicted even on a man, must be extremely dangerous from 

 the serrated or jagged nature of the instrument, and from the 

 additional lacerations which must necessarily attend the ex- 

 tracting it ; but this, though bad enough, is the extent of the 

 evil ; there is no injection of poison, or any deleterious liquid, 

 and nothing therefore is to be apprehended beyond the in- 

 flammatory consequences which may naturally attend so 

 rough a laceration, especially in an unhealthy subject. 



Colonel Hamilton Smith once witnessed the destruction of 

 a soldier by one of these cephalopteri off Trinidad. It was 

 supposed that the soldier, being a good swimmer, was at- 

 tempting to desert from the ship, which lay at anchor in the 

 entrance of the Bocca del Toro. The circumstance occurred 

 soon after day-light, and the man, being alarmed by the call 

 of a sailor in the main-cross trees, endeavoured to return to 

 the vessel, but the monster threw one of his fins over him, 

 and carried him down. The colonel is positive as to this 

 fish being a cephalopterus. 



The second family of the chondropterygian fish with fixed 

 gills, the Sucking-fish or Lampreys, are primarily remarkable 

 for the disposition of the genera, if the term may be used, to 

 depart from the ordinary types of their class, and approach 

 that of the worms. 



At the first sight, these fish resemble eels in the elongated 

 and rounded shape of the body, which, however, appears 

 almost truncated at the head, in consequence of the singular 



