70 CORYPH^NID^. 



vessel in which I was a passenger to England, — the Jane, commanded by 

 the late enterprising and excellent though unfortunate James Weddell, 

 author of a Voyage in the South Polar Regions, during which he dis- 

 covered the Sea-Leopard Seal, or Slenorrhyncus Weddellit, F. Cuvier, — 

 was accompanied from the back of Porto Santo, nearly into the mouth of the 

 British Channel, by a shoal of Bonitos (some sort of Tunny) mixed with 

 some large species of the genus Coryphana, which the sailors called 

 Dolphins. It was for a day or two the amusement of the crew to catch 

 these fishes ; for which nothing more was requisite than a hook baited with 

 a piece of fat, or even with white paper. They generally darted with the 

 greatest swiftness at the hook the moment it reached the water ; and in a 

 few minutes the decks were covered with their blood, and beaten by their 

 dying struggles : till the zest of capture was blunted by its facility, and 

 gave way to compassion. The flesh of the Dolphins was rather dry and 

 insipid, with a subacid flavour, and soon palling on the taste ; so that, after 

 the first day or two, no one on board would touch them, and they followed 

 us afterwards quite unmolested. After three or four days the Dolphins 

 were observed no longer, but the Bonitos still attended us ; till one morn- 

 ing, in the entrance of the Channel, we observed that our companions, as 

 we now acknowledged them, had all deserted us. This was about ten days 

 after their first appearance. I should add, that they kept generally on the 

 shady side of the vessel, and not more in her wake than at her prow. I 

 did not ascertain the species, being inattentive then to this branch of 

 Zoology : but it struck me that the beauty of the change of colour in the 

 Coryphtena had been much exaggerated ; and it was certainly not universal. 

 Most of them changed, however, almost at once under the eye, from a 

 fine silvery blue to greenish yellow, varied with some spots and patches of 

 the original blue. Some did not undergo this change at all ; and others, in 

 the water, appeared yellow naturally ; but these might be of a different 

 species. These fishes were about three feet long. In the stomach of one 

 I found a fine Hyaleea tridentata. Lam. and a few Crustacece ; but most of 

 them were empty. 



In Madeira I have since obtained three or four different sorts of Cory- 

 phczna : but the subject of the accompanying plate, which is the commonest 

 of these, and abounds occasionally in the market during the summer and 

 autumnal months, is not the common Dolphin or Dorado of sailors, the 

 C. hippurus, L., of the Mediterranean ; which is here comparatively 

 rare. 



The common Dorado of Madeira, C. eqtnsetis, Cuvier,* is a deeper 

 and smaller fish, never exceeding, or indeed scarcely equalling, two feet in 



* I perfectly s\ibscribe to Cuvier's correction, after Ilardoiiin, of the probably more transcrip- 

 tional error, adopted by Artedi and Linnaeus from Gaza and the earlier editions of Pliny, of Equi- 

 Belis for Equisetis. — See Cuv. and Val. ix. 294, note. 



