NO. 1816 STORY OF THE DEVIL-FISH — GILL 163 



III 



The Devil-fishes are inhabitants of warm-water seas. They are 

 to some extent pelagic, though, as a rule, they appear not to extend 

 far out into the high seas. They belong to the category of tropico- 

 politan forms, some one or other species occurring in every tropical 

 and every subtropical sea. Besides, some may venture far beyond 

 the limits of the Tropic of Cancer or of Capricorn, one wandering 

 occasionally as far as New York and another into the Mediterranean 

 Sea. 



If we may also believe Turner-Turner, "a characteristic pose is 

 that of lying motionless, or at most with its disk slightly undulating 

 with respiration, in the sand just under the water. Sometimes, in- 

 deed, they are found a yard or so above low-water mark, in pits of 

 their own making." This observation needs confirmation for Devil- 

 fishes, although applicable to Sting-rays. But certainly they require 

 to rest on the ground, and sometimes, wdien harpooned, they descend 

 and (to use a term of the angler) sulk on the bottom. Elliott re- 

 marks that at times one "plunges desperately for the bottom, to which 

 he sometimes clings for hours." But they are best known as active — 

 and very active — frequenters of the surface waters. 



Another characteristic of a Devil-fish's action is a tendency to 

 turn somersaults. According to Elliott,^ "It is a very curious exhibi- 

 tion. You first see the feelers thrown out of the water ; then the 

 white stomach, marked with five gills, or branchial apertures, on 

 each side (for the fish is on his back) ; then his tail emerges. After 

 a disappearance for a few seconds, the revolution is repeated, some- 

 times as often as six times. It happens occasionally that in making 

 these somersets the fish does not rise quite to the surface, but is 

 several feet below ; so that his revolutions are detected by the ap- 

 pearance and disappearance of the white or under part of his body, 

 dimly seen through the turbid water in which he delights. Some- 

 times, indeed, he is unseen ; but his presence is shown to the observant 

 sportsman by the boiling of the water from below, as from a great 

 caldron. With no better guide than this, the harpoon has been 

 darted down, and reached him when twelve feet below the surface." 



These somersaults (or somersets as Elliott- calls them) are often 

 made by the fishes when leaping out of the water. Elliott especially 

 noticed a number in 1846 (July ist) at four o'clock in the afternoon 

 near Hilton Head (S. C.) : "Thev did not show themselves somer- 



' Op. cit.. p. 75. 

 = 0p. cit.,p.85. 



