l64 SMITHSONIAN MISCKLLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 52 



setting for some time, but after a while began to sport and throw 

 somersets under the water, but so near to the surface as to show their 

 belHes in the evolution. We saw, I do not doubt, as many as twenty 

 fish. We counted eleven that leaped entirely out of the water. 

 They were in the channel, and were further from shore than where 

 we had usually met with them ; and, on approaching near to them in 

 ■our boat, we remarked that those which leaped entirely out of the 

 water did not again show themselves on the surface until they had 

 silently gone a mile or so toward the sea, when they reappeared, 

 gambolled awhile, threw new somersets, and again disappeared for 

 a new seaward movement. The fish which were behind came along 

 sporting until they had reached the spot where the first had thrown 

 their somersets. They, too, then threw their somersets, and disap- 

 peared like the first. Usually they leaped twice — leaping from their 

 backs, and falling likewise on their backs ; leaping, I should say, at 

 least ten feet above the water." 



The appearance and evolutions of the Devil-fish are indeed im- 

 pressive and startling. Holder^ thought that "no more diabolical 

 creature could be imagined. They resembled enormous bats, and 

 in following one another around the circle raised the outer tip of the 

 long wing-like fin high out of the water in a graceful curve, the 

 other being deeply submerged." They might be seen, "now gliding 

 down with flying motion of the wings; sweeping, gyrating upward 

 with a twisting vertical motion marvelous in its perfect grace ; now 

 they flashed white, again black, so that one would say they were 

 rolling over and over, turning somersaults, were it possible for so 

 large a fish to accomplish the feat." Such evolutions, Holder 

 learned, were "really a common practice of the big rays." But it is 

 the great leaps out of the water that are most striking, especially 

 during the stillness of the night. Holder,^ on such an occasion on 

 the outer Florida reef, first encountered the fish. "There came out 

 of the darkness, near at hand, a rushing, swishing noise ; then a clap 

 as of thunder, which seemed to go roaring and reverberating away 

 over the reef, like the discharge of a cannon. So startling was the 

 sound, so peculiar, that the negroes stopped rowing, and one or two 

 dropped their oars in consternation." 



•Op. cit.,p.8. 

 ' Op. cit., p. 2. 



