256 A HISTORY OF 



ent light ; their appearance is far from being esteemed a favourable 

 omen by the seamen; and from their boundings, springs, and frolics 

 in the water, experience has taught the mariners to prepare for a 

 storm. 



But it is not to one circumstance only that the ancients have confined 

 their fabulous reports concerning these animals ; as from their leaps 

 out of their element, they assume a temporary curvature, which is by 

 no means their natural figure in the water, the old painters and sculp- 

 tors have universally drawn them wrong. A dolphin is scarcely ever 

 exhibited by the ancients in a straight shape, but curved, in the posi 

 lion which they sometimes appear in when exerting their force; and 

 the poets too have adopted the general error. Even Pliny, the best 

 naturalist, has asserted, that they instantly die when taken out of the 

 water ; but Rondelet, on the contrary, assures us, that he has seen a 

 dolphin carried alive from Montpelier to Lyons. 



The moderns have more just notions of these animals; and have 

 got over the many fables, which every day's experience contradicts 

 Indeed their numbers are so great, and, though shy, they are so often 

 taken, that such peculiarities, if they were possessed of any, would 

 have been long since ascertained. They are found, the porpoise es- 

 pecially, in such vast numbers, in all parts of the sea that surrounds 

 this kingdom, that they are sometimes noxious to seamen, when they 

 sail in small vessels. In some places they almost darken the water 

 as they rise to take breath, and particularly before bad weather are 

 much agitated, swimming against the wind, and tumbling about with 

 unusual violence. 



Whether these motions be the gambols of pleasure or the agitations 

 of terror, is not well known. It is most probable that they dread 

 those seasons of turbulence, when the lesser fishes sink to the bottom, 

 and their prey no longer offers in sufficient abundance. In times of 

 fairer weather they are seen herding together, and pursuing shoals of 

 various fish with greater impetuosity. Their method of hunting their 

 game, if it may be so called, is to follow in a pack, and thus give eacli 

 other mutual assistance. At that season when the mackarel, the her- 

 ring, the salmon, and other fish of passage, begin to make their ap- 

 pearance, the cetaceous tribes are seen fierce in the pursuit ; urging 

 their prey from one creek or bay to another, deterring them from the 

 shallows, driving them towards each other's ambush, and using a 

 greater variety of arts than hounds are seen to exert in pursuing the 

 hare. However, the porpoise not only seeks for prey near the surface, 

 but often descends to the bottom in search of sand-eels and sea-worms, 

 which it roots out of the sand with its nose, in the manner hogs har- 

 row up the fields for food. For this purpose, the nose projects a lit- 

 tle, is shorter and stronger than that of the dolphin ; and the neck is 

 furnished with very strong muscles, which enable it the readier to 

 turn up the sand. 



But it sometimes happens, that the impetuosity, or the hunger, of 

 these anjmals, in their usual pursuits, urges them beyond the limits 

 of safety. The fishermen, wno extend their long nets for pilchards, 

 on the coast of Cornwall, have sometimes an unwelcome capture in one 

 of these. Their feeble nets, which are calculated only for tauing 

 smaller prey, suffer a universal laceration, from the efforts of this 



