80 



plain ? Yet, to the shame of authors who 

 invented and published such a falsity, and to 

 the humiliation of human pride, whose igno- 

 rance believed such things, this nonsense has 

 been held as a fact for many centuries, and co- 

 pied from book to book as indubitable, so far 

 that the very name of the fish was derived from 

 this idle story. This fish is a native of the 

 Indian Ocean, and in Ichthyology is termed 

 Echeneis. 



THE FLYING SCORPION* 

 How admirable is nature ! how extensive her 

 power, and how various the forms with which 

 she has surrounded the united elements of ani- 

 mated matter ! From the uncouth shape of the 

 wallowing whale, of the unwieldly hippopotamus, 

 or ponderous elephant, to the light and elegant 

 form of the painted moth, or fluttering colibri ; 

 she seems to have exhausted all ideas, all con- 

 ceptions, and not to have left a single figure un- 

 tried. This fish is one of those, in the outlines 

 and decorations of which she appears to have 

 indulged her fancy in one of the happiest hours 

 of the creation; and yet the whimsicality of the 



