430 Notes on Sport and Tj^avel v 



ing flies off a sleeping Venus than causing the 

 sh'ghtest sensation to permeate through the inch- 

 thick india-rubber hide, separated from any particu- 

 larly sentient nerves by inches of hardly animate 

 blubber, to the sensorium of any ordinary whale ! 

 Ay, a hide which can grow barnacles an inch 

 across, a bushel to the square yard, without any 

 greater apparent discomfort than that given to the 

 garden-bed by the broccoli sprout. May not another 

 reading of the story be, that the sudden appearance 

 of the ugly head of the grampus amidst a school of 

 basking fox-sharks terrifies them into skipping like 

 little rams? It has never been my fortune to see a 

 fox, or other, shark leap in any sea. 



Even Yarrell tells us a rather lame and un- 

 authenticated tale ' from a work lately published,' 

 but not named, how one Captain Crew ' had all 

 hands turned out at three A.M. to witness a battle 

 between several of the fish called threshers {Carcharias 

 vulpes) and some sword-fish on one side, and an 

 enormous whale on the other ' ; a curious com- 

 bination of naturally antagonistic forces for no 

 particular end, — another naval demonstration, in fact, 

 and like some later ones, without, I suspect, any 

 personal injury, or, for that matter, advantage, accru- 

 ing to any of the parties engaged. 



The stories of these queer associations are con- 

 stantly being repeated with variations, but are 

 always rather hard to reconcile with one's ideas of 

 the common sense of the animals engaged in them. 



