VORACITY OF THE RAYS. 241 
biting it in the paroxysm of his anguish. Although both had 
been hit in the foot, they felt the severest pain in the loins, in 
the region of the heart, and in the arm-pits. A robust man, 
wounded by a sting-ray, died in Demarara under the most 
dreadful convulsions. 
The rays are very voracious; their food consists of any sort 
of fish, mollusc, annelide, or crustacean, that they can catch. 
So powerful are their muscles and jaws that they are able to 
crush the strong shell of a crab with the greatest ease. Even in 
our seas they attain a considerable size. ‘Thomas Willoughby 
makes mention of a single skate of two hundred pounds’ weight, 
which was sold in the fish market at Cambridge to the cook of 
St. John’s College, and was found sufficient for the dinner of a 
society, consisting of more than a hundred and twenty persons. 
Dr. G. Johnston measured a sharp-nosed ray at Berwick, which 
was seven feet nine inches long and eight feet three inches 
broad. But our European rays are far from equalling the 
colossal dimensions of the sea-devil of the Pacific. This terrific 
monster swims fast, and often appears on the surface of the 
ocean, where its black unwieldy back looks like a huge stone 
projecting above the waters. It attains a breadth of twelve 
or fifteen feet, and Lesson was presented by a fisherman of 
Borabora with a tail five feet long. The Society Islanders 
catch the hideous animal with harpoons, and make use of its 
rough skin as rasps or files in the manufacture of their wooden 
utensils. 
Creatures so voracious and well armed as the rays would have 
attained a dangerous supremacy in the maritime domains had 
they equalled most other fishes in fecundity. Fortunately for 
their neighbours, they seldom produce more than one young at 
a time, which, as in the sharks, is enclosed in a four-cornered 
capsule ending in slender points, but not, as in the former, pro- 
duced into long filaments. 
Thus nature has in this case set bounds to the increase of a 
race which else might have destroyed the balance of marine 
existence; in most fishes, however, she has been obliged to 
provide against the danger of extinction by a prodigal abund- 
ance of new germs. If the cod did not annually produce more 
than nine millions of eggs, and the sturgeon more than seven ; 
if the flat-fish, mackerels, and herrings, did not multiply by 
