26 NATURAL HISTORY. 



These big skates are no doubt amongst the wonders of the sea, 

 and make one think of the *' Kraken. " But the best story of one 

 that I know is in a book called " Blue Water, " the author whereof 

 maintains that he saw at sea a skate which he took to be seventy feet 

 across the wings, " Noo, " as the Scotchman said, " we'll see what 

 can be dune aboot the breadth of the skate/' In the first instance, 

 the writer, a Mr. Keane, was at one time known in Bombay as the 

 author of a very quiet and " verisimilous " narrative of a pilgrimage 

 to Mecca, contributed to a daily paper here. Secondly, in the same 

 book, he deals with other fishes in a style free from exaggeration or 

 romance, and indeed his remarks upon sharks are very valuable, on 

 account of the care taken to strip the subject of its usual envelope 

 of tall talk. Finally, his description of the big skate's proceedings 

 is clearly taken from observation of a big skate on the top of 

 the water, the opportunity for which, and the power of using it, 

 are not very often found. The monstrous dimensions that I have 

 assigned to the Bat-Ray are taken from Sir Walter Elliot's mea- 

 surement, and are well known to be equalled by some American 

 Batoiclei. 



It appears to me that, making every allowance for the fact that 

 Mr. Keane' s Kraken did not stop to be measured, he may fairly be 

 credited with a breadth of 40 feet, and if his proportions were those 

 of Dicerobatis (which is about the shortest tailed of the family), 

 his tail may have been 30 feet of a total length of 50, allowing for 

 its curtailment by accidents in his necessarily long life. 



Such an animal, swimming and playing near the surface, would 

 account for any amount of sea-serpent stories, and especially for those 

 in which the serpent attacks a whale, represented by the body of the 

 fish. There is nothing in the nature of things to prevent the large 

 Batoid fishes from ranging from 4 feet long to 50, any more than 

 in the case of the cetacean mammals, which do so on this very 

 coast. I have shown cause above for believing that the sea-serpent, 

 whatever he is, belongs to no known type of marine Ophidia. 



As my penultimate fish is the biggest on record, my very last 

 shall be one of the smallest, if indeed it be a fish at all. In the 

 water, it is simply a black dot with a silvery rim or edge. But on 

 removal, this is seen to be the eye of a purely transparent gelatinous 

 creature having the shape of a very narrow sole, but swimming up- 

 right, quite symmetrical, and about 3 inches long (in the largest 

 specimens). On immersion in spirit it assumes a dead semi-opaque 



