Flying Fish a?jd Turtles 59 



flew directly across the launch, right before my eyes. Had 

 I known the fish were coming, I could have caught them 

 with a net or touched them with my outstretched hand. I 

 had thus an unrivaled opportunity to kill once and for all 

 the notion that they move their fins in flying. As is well 

 known, this has been a moot point amongst naturalists, 

 though it never should have been. No flight muscles are 

 revealed on dissection of the fish, yet the fact that their 

 fins do move has been insisted on time and time again. I 

 have watched them on so many hundreds of occasions that 

 I believe the observational error is to be explained in this 

 wise: The wings are very thin and delicate and sometimes 

 when flying fish are chased out of water and there is a 

 good sharp breeze blowing, their wings appear to move, 

 being caused to flutter by the angle at which the fish takes 

 the wind. Flying fish fly most freely in fairly calm weather. 

 I imagine that then they are swimming nearer to the sur- 

 face. In a heavy storm I have never seen fish fly at all. Once 

 I saw one caught in the air by a canary-yellow dolphin fish, 

 which rose at least three feet out of water to snap up its 

 prey. 



It was in the Bahamas on another occasion that I saw an 

 interesting sight. A giant loggerhead turtle, floating lazily 

 on the surface, would swim up to and gulp down Portu- 

 guese men-of-war, or Physalias, which were floating about 

 abundantly. The old turtle would ease up to the Physaha, 

 close his eyes, and make a snap for it. I suspect that the 

 hard, horny jaws and the tough skin were impervious to 

 the painful stinging caused by the nettle cells of the Si- 

 phonophore's tentacles, but that probably the tender skin 



