THE IMPENETRABLE SEA 



fin-rays) inwards, drawing in the smaller crustaceans on 

 which they feed". 



There seems to be hardly any limit to the size of this 

 creature. Reading through numbers of accounts of them, 

 their dimensions are given again and again as "the 

 largest known" — and then exceeded again and again in 

 further accounts. One authority says "Swimmers very 

 often perish in them, or at best lose an arm or a leg". 

 There can be no doubt that humans have often been 

 bitten in two by these devil-fish, with their terrible 

 triangular teeth, roughly 144 in number and furnished 

 with saw-like edges. 



A French naturalist, M. le Vaillant, was a passenger 

 in a sailing-ship towards the end of the last century, 

 crossing the warm waters of the Mediterranean, when he 

 saw three of these huge fish sporting around the ship. 

 After some persuasion the captain was induced to order 

 his crew to efifect their capture. They secured what M. le 

 Vaillant later described as "the smallest of the three". 

 When it was brought on board it was found to measure 

 twenty-eight feet in width, and to weigh over a ton. Its 

 mouth was easily large enough to swallow a full-grown 

 man. 



Despite their ferocity the male and female devil-fish 

 show the utmost affinity towards each other and will 

 defend their little ones with their lives. It has happened 

 on numbers of occasions that one fish has been harpooned 

 or otherwise fatally wounded, and its mate has hung 

 about the boat until it shared the same fate. In one 

 instance where the female had been caught in a tunny 

 net, a male devil-fish was seen wandering about the net 

 for days and was at last found dead in the partition of the 

 net where his mate had been captured, although her 

 body had been removed. The sentimental words used by 

 the authority who records this story — "the name devil- 

 fish ought not to be applied to so loving and faithful a 

 creature" — may have some semblance of sense. 



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