HOW FISHES FEED. 87 



inhabitants of the ocean. It is used in tearing 

 off pieces of flesh from its victim's body, or for 

 ripping open the abdomen. The detached 

 fragment, or protruding pieces of viscera, are 

 then seized by the mouth and swallowed. The 

 teeth of the jaws framing the mouth are, it 

 should be remarked, too feeble to inflict wounds, 

 or to be in any way useful as weapons of 

 offence. 



Another large powerfully-armed and really 

 dangerous fish is the sword-fish {Xiphias). They 

 bear the name of sword-fish on account of 

 the great development of the upper jaw, which 

 forms a huge tapering sword-like weapon. It 

 might be noted here that this is of quite different 

 origin to the blade of the saw of the " saw-fish " 

 which we have just discussed. The sword of 

 the sword-fish is covered along its under surface 

 by numerous and small teeth ; and the weapon, 

 as a whole, is a very terrible and very powerful 

 one. They attack apparently, without provoca- 

 tion, whales and other large cetaceans, which 

 they invariably succeed in killing, by repeated 

 thrusts of the sword. Battles of this kind re- 

 mind one of the stories in " Gulliver's travels " — 

 this puny antagonist, of some twelve to fifteen feet 

 in length, ferociously assailing the giant whale of 

 sometimes seventy or eighty feet. It appears that 

 occasionally sword-fish make a mistake, and, 

 after the fashion of Don Quixote, tilts at wind- 

 mills in the shape of large vessels, under the 

 impression that they are whales. For this most 

 grave error of judgment it pays a heavy penalty; 

 in that having no power to make effective back- 



