SCOMBEROIDjE. 



the very best Savour. The fishes are not very par- 

 ticular in their own eating. The only ground of se- 

 lection appears to be what they can swallow, in prefe- 

 rence to what they cannot ; and it is even said that, 

 in the absence of animal food, they will eat the sea- 

 weed which floats in the eddies of the ocean. The 

 bonito is among the rarest of those fishes of the 

 warm seas that occasionally straggle to our shores. 

 There are a few more of the subordinate genera of 

 the great genus mackarel, which resemble the tunnies 

 in some particulars, and differ from them in others ; 

 but their habits are all nearly the same. We shall 

 therefore proceed to notice another of the leading 

 genera. 



XIPHIAS (Swordfish). This is a fish of so much 

 celebrity, that it has got a nominal place among the 

 stars as a constellation ; and certainly, numerous as 

 are the inhabitants of the ocean, there are none of 

 them more deserving of celebrity than the mem- 

 bers of this genus. Cuvier divides them into four 

 sub-genera ; but our limits will not permit us to go 

 into the details of these. Several of them abound in 

 the Mediterranean, and a stray of at least one of 

 this is occasionally found on the British shores, while 

 numbers occur in the open sea, still further to the 

 north. There are others which are more confined to 

 the tropical seas ; and they attain a very large size, 

 and may fairly be designated terrible fishes, for bulk, 

 armature, action, and every other attribute that can 

 render a fish entitled to the name. 



In their internal organisation, the extreme small- 

 ness of their scales, in the crests on the tail, and in 

 the vast power of the caudal fin, these fishes have a 

 considerable resemblance to the tunnies ; but in other 

 respects they are distinct. Their most remarkable 

 character is the production of the upper jaw, in an in- 

 strument formed like the blade of a sword, with hard 

 spiny tubercles on each side, and nearly half as long 

 as the head the body and the tail taken together. 

 This consists chiefly of a prolongation of the inter- 

 maxillaries and the vomer, supported by the ethmoides. 

 It is the only weapon which these fishes have, for 

 though they have some small teeth on the bones 

 of the pharynx, they have none on either of the jaws, 

 and they have no tongue properly so called. The 

 produced jaw is, however, a truly formidable wea- 

 pon, for they can not only plunge it to the hilt in the 

 body of the very largest marine animal, but can drive 

 it through the planking of a ship, and into the tim- 

 bers, until it breaks in two with the violence of the 

 concussion. When such an occurrence takes place, 

 those on board the ship, even though of considerable 

 burden, are said to feel a shock, similar in kind if not 

 in degree to what is felt when a ship strikes against 

 a rock. The gills of the sword-fishes are peculiar ; 

 they do not consist of fringes in the form of the teeth 

 of a comb, as is usual among the bony fishes, but each 

 consists of two large parallel lamina;, with reticulated 

 surfaces. 



This peculiar form of the gills, which are so very 

 important organs -in the vital system, would lead us 

 to suppose that there must be something in the habits 

 of the fishes which renders this peculiarity of the 

 breathing apparatus necessary ; and when we come 

 to examine the action of these fishes, we find that 

 such is really the case. Mackarel themselves are 

 swift in the water, and so are others of the family ; 

 but the sword-fishes dash along like thunderbolts in 

 the water, and thus the impetus with which they de- 



liver their weapon, is perhaps greater than that of 

 any other animal. This extreme rapidity, and the 

 rebound which must ensue when they strike against 

 an animal or other substance of sufficient mass for 

 offering resistance, would be serious to them if they 

 had gills fringed in the usual manner ; for the fringes 

 would get entangled, the circulation would stop, and 

 the fish would be strangulated. The laminated gills 

 are not exposed to this ; and so, possessing them, the 

 fishes can drive away, with safety. 



It is not, however, for their curious weapon, their 

 size, and their speed only that these fishes are so 

 celebrated ; for the flesh of them is excellent, supe- 

 rior perhaps to that of the tunny, though, like the 

 flesh of all the driving about fishes, we may suppose 

 that it is dry when dressed in the same way that we 

 are in the habit of dressing the flesh of the soft 

 fishes. The sword-fishes also offer the surplus of their 

 number readily to the use of man ; that is to say, 

 they come to the shores in obedience to the grand 

 impulse of nature during the summer months, and 

 they keep so near the surface and are so large, that 

 they are easily seen. It does not appear that they 

 shoal in any considerable number, and they are rather 

 sturdy for net-fishing, unless it were conducted upon 

 a scale of magnificence and expense, which could 

 hardly be done by such people as the inhabitants of 

 the shores to which these fishes resort in the spawn- 

 ing season ; and when they are in the wide sea, of 

 course any fishing for these or any other of the 

 mackarel family is out of the question. We shall 

 now mention the sub-genera, but confining the few 

 details which we have to offer chiefly to the one which 

 is found in the British seas. 



These sub-genera are ; Xiphias, the sword-fishes 

 properly so called, of which we shall afterwards say 

 something more at length ; Tetrapturm, so called 

 from four projecting crests, two on each side of the 

 base of the tail, and which has the snout formed like 

 a dagger, and each of the ventral fins only a single 

 little lobe without any articulation ; Makiara, which 

 is known we believe from a single specimen only, is 

 like the preceding in all respects, only it wants the 

 rudimental ventral fins, but this may be merely acci- 

 dental in the specimen on which the subdivision is 

 founded, as it is known that the common sword-fish, 

 the typical one of the genus, wears away the anal fin 

 as it gets old, though that fin is complete when the 

 fish is younger ; and Isteophorut, which have the 

 snout and the crests on the tail like the last, but the 

 dorsal fin very high, and the ventrals long, slender, 

 and each composed of two rings. The dorsal fin in 

 these is said to catch the wind in the same manner as 

 a sail, and thus to assist the fishes in their progress 

 through the water. It may do this!, and it appears 

 to do it ; and the fact that several members of the 

 family can elevate and depress the dorsal fin at plea- 

 sure, shows that this fin has different uses upon different 

 occasions. This is understood to be the sub-genus 

 or section which contains the great sword-fishes of 

 the tropical latitudes, in which latitudes they are very 

 numerous in all the three oceans ; but when we come 

 to consider a genus of which the known habitat is 

 the Atlantic, the Indian Ocean, or the Pacific, the 

 field is too wide for permitting us to speak with con- 

 fidence as to the details. It is generally supposed, 

 however, that these are the ones that drive against 

 ships with so much force, and leave part of their swords 

 in the timber as proofs of the fact. 



