V ' Among the Sharks and Whales' 427 



teeth. Well, these being ware that the whales are 

 there, break into this secret big creek, out of the 

 way, seek them out, and if they meet with either the 

 young ones or the dammes that have newly spawned, 

 or yet great with spawn, they all to cut and hack 

 them with their trenchant teeth, yea they run against 

 them as it were a foist or ship of warre, armed with 

 sharpe brazen pikes in the beak-head.' 



Here he seems to make a slight confusion between 

 the grampus or orca^ and the sword-fish, but he 

 clearly knew that the first was a cetacean, for he 

 expressly states that he saw a boat swamped at 

 Ostea ' with the abundance of the water that this 

 monstrous fish spouted and filled it withal.' And 

 Pliny, though he tells many queer tales, always dis- 

 criminates carefully between those he has gained by 

 mere hearsay, and those that he vouches for on his 

 own direct authority ; and so we will believe him in 

 this, though it certainly must have been either a 

 very small vocit, or a very big grampus indeed. 



I wonder, after all, whether other people are right 

 and I am wrong, and that the grampus really attacks 

 the whale from an hereditary and transmitted in- 

 stinctive remembrance of the deeds of his ancestors ? 

 Queer as it looks, we unquestionably find traces of this 

 sort of thing in man and other animals, and more 

 than probably in plants, who do things sometimes 

 which, though useless to them in present circum- 

 stances, were absolutely necessary to their existence 

 under earlier conditions. 



