96 Papers from the Department of Marine Biology. 



This is concurred in by that keen observer, William Dampier. In 

 his "Two voyages to Campeachy," which appeared in sixth edition in 

 1729, he says of "Parricootas," which he describes as long fish, having 

 round bodies, and long mouths with sharp teeth, that: 



"They commonly haunt in Lagunes among Islands, or in the Sea near the 

 Shore. They are a floating Fish, and greedily take the Hook, and will snap 

 at Men too in the Water." 



To Pere Labat (1742), of the 18 or 20-foot barracudas, we owe some 

 interesting data and even more interesting conjectures. On the 

 question of its danger to man he writes : 



"As it is not obliged to turn on its side like the shark when it wishes to 

 bite, it is infinitely more dangerous. Our savages, who attack and kill 

 Requins [sharks] and Pantoufliers [hammerhead sharks] with knives, do not 

 dare to run that risk with Becunes, because, moving with such extraordinaiy 

 speed, they carry away an arm, a leg, or a head as if they had been cut off 

 with a blow of a sabre. It has happened several times that horses and other 

 animals crossing [the river Gallion] by swimming have had their legs cut 

 off or half their bellies carried away." 



Going further into the matter, he writes : 



"One is assured by many experiences that voracious fishes like the Requin, 

 the Pantouflier or Zygsena, and the Becune attack more often a dog or a 

 horse rather than a man, and a negro rather than a white man, when by 

 reason of the overturning of a boat or canoe they find these different species 

 of animals in the sea. I leave it to the curious to seek the reason, it suffices 

 that that which I report is a veritable fact and testified to by those who have 

 accurate knowledge of America and of other regions where these carnivorous 

 fishes are found. My notion is that the bodies of dogs and horses give off 

 ' corpuscles ' which strike the fishes more strongly and attract them longer. 

 Just as we see that wolves, crows, and even dogs more often come to carrion 

 or to a body in which corruption has begun, rather than to a body which 

 has recently been deprived of life. To my mind also not only are ' corpuscles ' 

 exhaled by them in large quantities but also they extend farther and strike 

 more strongly the organs of those animals." 



This recalls and substantiates what Sloane has written on the same 

 subject (see page 95). But Labat further says: 



"But a thing rather surprising, yet one which is however of public notoriety, 

 is that these same fish more often attack an Englishman than a Frenchman, 

 when they find them both together in the water. It may be that the English- 

 man has pores more open than the Frenchmen, and as a necessary consequence 

 he will exhale more corpuscles proper to strike the organs of these fishes and 

 hence attract them." 



Labat next goes on to argue at some length that there is a difference 

 in the " corpuscles" given off by members of two nations because of a 

 difference in their foods and in their physical habit of body: that the 

 Englishman, being a heavy eater of meats and of a hearty rugged habit 

 of body ("beefy"), all in marked contrast with the more delicate- 



