V ^ Among the Sharks mid Whales' 439 



embued with an amount of unconscious poetic power 

 that their facts, when they get hold of any, become 

 enhaloed with such roseate fogs as to render them 

 very hard to be understood or depended upon. Of 

 course you can train a sailor to be a good observer, 

 — the Challenger proved that — and as a rule they 

 are keen naturalists, and spare no trouble to get 

 ' the doctor ' a ' speciment ' to talk to them about ; 

 but I must say that the facts of an ordinary seaman 

 are of as little value as those supplied by the ordinary 

 landsman or woman, — particularly woman. 



When shall we finally send to the limbo of 

 absurdities the legend of the flying-fish only taking 

 to its wings when pursued by the dolphin, as if it 

 did not fly as naturally as a bird from a tree ? Or 

 that other, of its being hawked at during its flight by 

 the albatross ? The albatross ! A clumsy bird that 

 cannot even pick up a morsel of pork fat from the 

 surface of the water without sitting down to it as 

 squarely as a farm-labourer to his bit of bread and 

 bacon, and who, likely as not, has it taken from 

 under his very bill by a sharp little Cape pigeon ; 

 a likely fowl to catch flying -fishes, or to split the 

 skull of the * man overboard ' in its swoop, as depicted 

 in pictures and sung in songs. I have never yet 

 seen the bird that could catch the common flying- 

 fish in full flight, to say nothing of that four-winged 

 one with a body as transparent as a smelt, and with 

 two long barbules on the lower jaw, which came on 

 board last year between 37° N. and the Azores. That 



