240 THE COMMON DOLPHIN. 



made itself familiar with man, and conceived a 

 warm attachment for him. Pliny narrates that in 

 Barhary, near the town of Hippo, a Dolphin used 

 to frequent the shore, and accept of food from any- 

 hand which supplied it ; it would mix among those 

 who were bathing, would allow them to mount its 

 back, would consign itself with docility to their 

 direction, and obey them with as much celerity as 

 precision (lib. ix. chap. 48). Still more extraordi- 

 nary is that other tale the ancients relate in illus- 

 tration of the assertion that the Dolphin was yet 

 more partial to children than to adults. Thus, 

 according to Pliny, in several chronicles it was 

 recorded that a Dolphin which had penetrated the 

 lake of Lucrinus, in Campania, every day received 

 bread from the hand of a child, answering to his 

 call, and transporting him on its back to school to 

 the other side of the lake. This intimacy continued 

 for several years, when the boy dying, the affec- 

 tionate Dolphin, overwhelmed with grief, soon sunk 

 under its bereavement. For such stories as these, 

 which might be easily multiplied from Herodotus, 

 Plutarch, &c. we apprehend that most of our readers 

 will have but little patience ; and we therefore 

 dismiss them with the well known apophthegm, 



Sod quid non Grecia mendax 

 Audet in liistoria ? 



The Common Dolphin is usually six or seven 

 feet long, sometimes nine or ten. Its proportions 

 on the whole are pleasing, and admirably adapted 



