THE DULPHIN. 107 
The most famous member of this numerous family 1s un- 
doubtedly the classical Dolphin of the ancients (Delphinus del- 
phis) which attains a length of from 
nine to ten feet, and is, according to 
Pliny, the swiftest of all animals, so 
as to merit the appellation of the 
“arrow of the sea.” His lively 
troops often accompany for days the 
track of a ship, and agreeably interrupt the monotony of a long 
sea-voyage. As if in mockery of the most rapid sailer, they 
shoot past so as to vanish from the eye, and then return again 
with the same lightning-like velocity. Their spirits are so 
brisk that they frequently leap into the air, as if longing to ex- 
patiate in a lighter fluid. Hence, dolphins are the favourites of 
the mariner and the poet, who have vied in embellishing their 
history with the charms of fiction. 
Everybody knows the wonderful story of Arion, who having 
been forced by pirates to leap into the sea, proceeded merrily 
to his journey’s end on the back of a dolphin: — 
Delphinus Delphis. 
‘Secure he sits, and with harmonious strains 
Requites his bearer for his friendly pains. 
The gods approve, the dolphin heaven adorns, 
And with nine stars a constellation forms.” 
Pliny relates the no less astonishing tale of a boy at Bais, who 
by feeding it with bread, gained the affections of a dolphin, 
so that the thankful creature used to convey him every morning 
to school across the sea to Puteoli, and back again. When the 
boy died, the poor disconsolate dolphin returned every morning 
to the spot where he had been accustomed to meet his friend, 
and soon fell a victim to his grief. The same naturalist tells us 
also that the dolphins at Narbonne rendered themselves very 
useful to the fishermen by driving the fish into their nets, and 
were generously rewarded for their assistance with “ bread soaked 
in wine.” A king of Caria having chained a dolphin in the 
harbour, its afflicted associates appeared in great numbers, tes- 
tifying their anxiety for its deliverance by such unequivocal 
signs of sorrow, that the king, touched with compassion, re- 
stored the prisoner to liberty. 
Such, and similar fables, which were believed by the na- 
