134 The Poets and Nature. 



In the natural history of the period we read that " there 

 is a little fish, keeping ordinarie about rockes, named 

 Echeneis. It is thought that if it settle and sticke to the 

 keel of a ship under water, the ship goeth the slower by 

 that means, wherefore it is called the 'stay-ship.'" Now 

 Pliny is here cautious enough, and attributes no more to 

 the remora than is actually the property of barnacles when 

 in number. But popular fancy outran fact, and a single 

 remora, four inches long, was supposed to have held back 

 Antony's flag-ship in the sea-fight off Actium. Periander 

 also, among others, declared himself the victim of a similar 

 accident, and the fiction flourished, thanks chiefly to poets 

 and heralds, till a couple of centuries ago 



"The sucking-fish, with secret chains 

 Clung to the keel, the swiftest ship detains." 



The flying-fish, "the aspiring fish that fain would be a 

 bird," are, in the same way, favourites on account of a fancied 

 power of protracted flight. Thus Leyden, in some lines 

 written after being at sea for the first time 



" On wondrous fins the fishes fly, 

 Like birds on the ocean plain, 

 In flocks like sparrows soar on high,- 

 And sport and glitter on the main." 



while Shelley has the mysterious lines 



" As the flying fish drop from the Indian deep, 

 And mix with the sea-birds half asleep." 



Montgomery, who often saw them, speaks of them flying 

 " in bow-and-arrow " figures, which is accurate ; but is he 

 speaking from observation when he describes pelicans prey- 

 ing upon them when on the wing, " snapping them, as mos- 

 quitoes are by swallows " ? Cowley correctly speaks of their 

 " short silver wings," meaning of course that their flight is 

 brief, and the metaphors taken from this brevity by Swift, 

 Congreve, Shenstone and others, are both apt and forcible : 



