COMMON DOLPHIN. 463 



back of a Dolphin which he had charmed by his music 

 is universally known, and the car of Amphitrite drawn 

 across the ocean by a group of the same animals is a 

 fiction as easy and natural as it is beautiful. Nor are 

 the ancient representations of its form much more con- 

 sonant with truth than these stories of its habits, and 

 it requires some stretch of the imagination to identify 

 the round-.headed creature, with curved back and spiny 

 fins which is represented in ancient coins and statues, 

 with the straight sharp-beaked animal figured at the 

 head of this description. There are exceptions, how- 

 ever, to this general censure, and there is no difficulty in 

 recognizing the Common Dolphin in the animal repre- 

 sented on the reverse of a Syracusan coin of uncertain 

 date preserved in the British Museum, of which the 

 vignette is an accurate copy. 



The Common Dolphin is a native of the more temperate 

 regions of the North Atlantic, and of the Mediterranean 

 Sea. It is known on the Greenland coast, but is there 

 rarer than the Porpoise. Lilljeborg considers it rare in 

 the Scandinavian Seas, but Herr Malmgren identifies 

 a large " school " seen by him on the Norwegian coast 

 with this species. South of these countries it is not 

 uncommonly met with on both sides of the Atlantic, and 

 according to M. Gervais it is stationary in the Mediter- 

 ranean. 



In our own waters this Dolphin is not uncommon, and 

 is frequently taken in fishermen's nets. On the Cornish 

 coasts Mr. Couch says that it appears in considerable 

 numbers. " In the month of September 1845, eight or 

 ten in a day were brought on shore at Mount's Bay for 

 many days in succession." Dolphins are sometimes to 

 be seen in the fish-market at Billingsgate, and three 

 specimens from that source are preserved in the British 



