UNCLE IN ENGLAND. 21 



flat fish, are not furnished with an air-bladder, 

 because they never quit the bottom of the sea ; 

 and Colonel Travers, to prove that some fish are 

 not intended to sink very far below the surface, 

 mentioned the following curious circumstance. 

 When a whale is attacked by a sword-fish, he 

 immediately dives ; and the sword-fish, not being 

 calculated by Nature to bear the enormous pres- 

 sure* of the sea at very great depth, is obliged to 

 withdraw his weapon ; if he cannot speedily 

 extricate it, he dies. My uncle said that this 

 fact helped to explain the facility with which 

 those great monsters are killed by our Greenland 

 fishermen : when a whale is struck by a harpoon, 

 he imagines it to be a sword-fish, and, as usual, 

 dives " } this he does with such velocity, that the 

 harpooner is obliged to throw water on the part 

 of the boat over which the harpoon-line runs, to 

 prevent its taking fire ; but the power of diving is 

 probably limited even in a wbale, and the length 

 of line, perhaps a mile or two, which he has 

 taken out and is obliged to drag through the 

 water, at last tires him he stops and the men, 

 by slowly pulling in the line, in fact haul the boat 

 towards him ; again he sets off he is again tired 

 and is ultimately exhausted and killed by 

 fatigue ! If he ran straight out, near the surface, 

 no line could be long enough, or strong enough, 

 to check him whenever a whale does do so, 

 the line snaps, and he escapes. 



