A Swift Glutton 157 



at first sight is not at all unlike the gigantic mackerel 

 called the sword-fish. Its body is certainly somewhat 

 slenderer, and it has no sword protruding from its 

 upper jaw, but in contour of body, arrangement of 

 fins, and especially the huge sail-like dorsal, it is very 

 similar. This last extraordinary member is like the 

 upper third of a circle, cut off horizontally. In the 

 centre it is twice as high as the body is wide, and its 

 limits fore and aft are from the neck to a few inches 

 forward of the tail. Its head is ferocious-looking 

 enough to justify its Latin title, even if its fierce 

 voracity were not known by the contents of its stomach, 

 one having been found with twenty-seven specimens 

 of the spiny lump-fish within its maw. It has not 

 many teeth, but they are large and fang-like, also they 

 point backwards into the mouth, obviously to prevent 

 the wriggling outwards of living prey. Like several 

 other predatory fish whose attacks are characterised 

 by swift directness, this creature has the lower jaw 

 longer than the upper, reminding one strongly of the 

 pike. Altogether A . ferox is an elegant warlike-looking 

 fish, whose appearance is not at all outr&, even though 

 it does frequent great depths. 



Its range is very great, specimens having been found 

 in the North-Western Atlantic, in Australian seas, 

 and in the Northern Pacific. But this may safely 

 be predicated of nearly all deep-sea fishes, the tempera- 

 ture below a thousand feet being everywhere the same, 

 except where submarine geysers send their boiling 

 waters up into the superincumbent ocean. And as 

 the composition of the ocean waters is practically 

 the same everywhere, it may be reasonably inferred 

 that denizens of waters below the fixed temperature 

 line will be found all the watery world over wherever 

 the ocean is deep enough, which, indeed, has so far 



