454 Dr. Bancroft on the Sea-Devil of Jamaica. 



the divers engaged in the Pearl Fisheries between Panama and Guayaquil 

 by a certain prodigiously large fish called Manta, which, says he, " be- 

 *' ing broad and long like a quilt, wraps its fins lound a man that hap- 

 *' pens to come within its reach, and immediately squeezes him to death," 

 to prevent which the officers are always on the watch that they may warn 

 the divers by a signal of their danger : and this statement has been re- 

 peated by Mr. Walter in the 8th chapter of the 2d book of his Relation 

 of Lord Anson's Voyage, as well as by the Abbe Raynal, and since adopted 

 by Alcedo, who, in his excellent Geographical and Historical Dictionary 

 of America, (article Manta) has described the fish as being " so inimical 

 *.* . to man, that it darts at the diver immediately that he submerges, and 

 " envelopes, and devours him." The Manta has, I believe, been ge- 

 nerally supposed to belong to the Ray family, but its species has not 

 hitherto been ascertained, so far as I can discover. The only conjecture 

 about it by any naturalist that I have found is that of Colonel Montagu 

 who, in the second volume of the Wernerian Transactions, page 426, hints 

 at the probability of the sharp-nosed Ray, Raia Oxyrinchus, being " the 

 •' Manta of the South Seas, where undoubtedly its size is vastly in- 

 " creased." In this, however, the Colonel proves to have erred, for I am 

 assured by several Spanish gentlemen who went to see our Devil-fish, (two 

 of whom are merchants in the habit of navigating between Guayaquil 

 and Panama), that it was the very same fish which they had been accus- 

 tomed to see, and to call Manta, but they considered our individual as 

 rather small. Its identity therefore with the Manta of Spanish authors 

 being established, I beg leave to suggest, in case, for the reasons already 

 given, or for others, it should be ascertained not to be a Cephalopterus, 

 and a new genus be required to be created for its reception, that we ought 

 not to seek either in the Greek or in the Latin language for a generic title 

 which shall designate its frontal flappers or feeders, because the structure 

 and uses of organs such as these were utterly unknown to the ancients, 

 and even till very lately to the moderns ; and that instead of a learned, 

 but necessarily inappropriate title, it will be more safe and useful to 

 science to employ one already familiarized to ichthyologists, and no 

 longer obscure, and to call the genus by the name of Manta, and our 

 species by that of Manta Americana, from its having been hitherto found, 

 if not solely, at least chiefly, in the American Seas. 



