THE ATLANTIC OCEAN. 201 



mg-fish were about to drop ! Sometimes this catas- 

 trophe took place at too great a distance for us to 

 see from the deck exactly what happened; but on 

 our mounting high into the rigging, we may be said 

 to have been in at the death ; for then we could dis- 

 cover that the unfortunate little creatures, one after 

 another, either popped right into the Dolphin's jaws 

 as they lighted on the water, or were snapped up 

 instantly afterwards. 



" It was impossible not to take an active part with 

 our pretty little friends of the weaker side, and ac- 

 cordingly we very speedily had our revenge. The 

 middies and the sailors, delighted with the chance, 

 rigged out a dozen or twenty lines from the jib- 

 boom end and spritsail-yard-arms with hooks, baited 

 merely with bits of tin, the glitter of whieh re- 

 sembles so much that of the body and wings of the 

 Flying-fish, that many a proud Dolphin, making- 

 sure of a delicious morsel, leaped in rapture at the 

 deceitful prize."* 



Though these and other recorded anecdotes indu- 

 bitably refer to the bright pearly fishes just described, 

 there cannot be a doubt that the same habits are 

 found to mark the true Cetaceous Dolphins; while 

 at the same time I confess that I do not recollect any 

 instance in which such pursuit has been witnessed, in 

 my own experience, or recorded in books of voyages. 

 Indeed I do not conceive that the chase of the Flying- 

 fish by the Coryphene has been often witnessed, nor 

 that it can be considered as any other than a rare 

 occurrence. As the aerial boundings of the Flying- 



* Frag. Voy. imd Trav. Second Series. Vol. i. p. 224. 



