"Parting day 

 Dies like tlie dolpiiin, whom each pang imbues 

 With a new colour as it gasps away; 

 The last still loveliest, till 'tis gone, and 



all is gray." 



Here is a peculiar confusion, for this is not the mammaHan 

 dolphin of which we have been speaking, but the swift piscivor- 

 ous oceanic fish Coryphaena hippurus, the dolphin of sailors. It 

 is blue with deeper spots, and gleaming with gold. It is, indeed, 

 famous for the beauty of its changing colors when dying. The 

 mammalian dolphin exhibits no such spectacular color changes 

 when dying. 



Happily, it is not with dying dolphins or with their changing 

 colors that we are concerned here, but rather with ours, the 

 changing color of the complexion of our once too sophisticated 

 beliefs. Beliefs which, in their own way, were very much more 

 in the nature of myths than the ancient ones which we wrote 

 off a little too disdainfully as such. The history of the dolphin 

 constitutes an illuminating example of the eclipse of knowledge 

 once possessed by the learned, but which was virtually com- 

 pletely relegated to the outermost fringes of mythology during 

 the last eighteen hundred years. Perhaps there is a moral to be 

 drawn here. If so, I shall leave it to others to draw. But now 

 that scientific interest in the dolphin has been aroused we are 

 entering into a new era of delphinology, and wdth the confirma- 

 tion of so many of the observations of the ancients already made, 

 we may look forward with confidence to others. Dolphins have 

 large brains; possibly they will some day be able to teach us 

 what brains are really for. 



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