18 DEVIL FISHING. 



and, when landed on the beach, measured twenty 

 feet across the back. 



I suspect, Mr. Editor, if the truth were told, we 

 have few sportsmen who would venture on the 

 daring feat of the African "May." Had he 

 belonged to the Saxon or Norman race, he had 

 probably been knighted, and allowed to quarter on 

 his shield the horns of the devil-fish, in token of 

 his exploit ! As it is, his praise had almost been 

 unsung, " sacro quia caret vate." 



Our modern sportsmen, far from attacking, are 

 content to be let alone by these devil-fish. But 

 two instances to the contrary have occurred within 

 my recollection. The first eventuated in a sound 

 ducking to the parties 'concerned: the last was 

 more curious. A respectable planter, named Jones, 

 who was remarkable for mechanical ingenuity, was 

 in the habit of amusing himself, during the long 

 days of the summer solstice, in constructing curious 

 self-invented pieces of mechanism. Like a thousand 

 others, he attempted the discovery of perpetual 

 motion ; at one time the mystery was detected in 

 the shifting buckets of the self-tending Chinese 

 wheel ; at another, he had solved it by quicksilver, 

 included .in revolving wheels, applied so as to force 

 down one side with such vigorous impulse as to drive 

 up its opposite after the manner in which our Yan- 



