ELEVENTH ANNUAL MEETING. 1ig 
& doth give him such blowes, with his weapon, that you would 
think it to be a crake of great shot.* 
Skeptical modern science is not satisfied with this interpretation 
of any combat at sea seen at a distance. It recognizes the im- 
probability of aggressive partnership between two animals so 
different as the swordfish and a shark, and explains the turbu- 
lent encounters occasionally seen at sea by ascribing them to the 
attacks of the killer-whale, Orca sp., upon larger species of the 
same order. 
There can be little doubt though that swordfish sometimes 
attack whales just as they do ships. The habit is mentioned by 
Pliny, and is the motive for one of the Vistons of the World of 
Edmund Spenser. 
‘* Toward the sea turning my troubled eye 
I saw the fish (if fish I may it cleepe) 
That makes the sea before his face to flye 
And with his flaggie finnes doth seeme to sweepe 
The fomie waves out of the dreadful deep. 
The huge Leviathan, dame Nature’s wonder, 
Making his sport, that manie makes tO weep: 
A swordfish small, him from the rest did sunder, 
That, in his throat him pricking softly under, 
His wide abysse him forced forth to spewe, 
That all the sea did roar like heavens thunder, 
And all the waves were stained with filthie hewe, 
Whatever thing seems small in common eyes.’’* 
[*Spenser’s Visions of the World’s Vanitie, 1591.] 
* The following isa fair example of the average newspaper paragraphers treatment of the 
subject : 
* ‘’ Combats of the ocean.—Among the extraordinary spectacles sometimes witnessed by those 
who ‘ go down to the sea in ships,’ none are more impressive than a combat for the supremacy 
between the monsters of the deep. The battles of the swordfish and whale are described as 
Homeric in grandeur. The swordfish go in schools like whales, and the attacks are regular 
sea fights. When the two troops meet, as soon as the swordfish have betrayed their presence 
by a few bounds in the air, the whales draw together and close up their ranks. The sword- 
fish always endeavors to take the whale in the flank, either because its cruel instinct has 
revealed to it the defect in the carcasses—for there exists near the brachial fins of the whale 
a spot where wounds are mortal—or because the flank presents a wider surface to.its blow. 
The swordfish recoils to secure a greater impetus. If the movement escapes the keen eye of 
his adversary the whale is lost, for it receives the blow of the enemy and dies instantly. But 
if the whale perceives the swordfish at the instant of the rush, by a spontaneous bound it 
springs clear of the water its entire length. and falls on its flank with a crash that resounds 
for many leagues, and whitens the sea with boiling foam. The gigantic animal has only its 
tail for its defense. It tries to strike its enemy, and finishes him at a single blow. But if the 
active swordfish avoids the fatal tail the battle becomes more terrible. The aggressor 
springs from the water in histurn, falls upon the whale, and attempts, not to pierce, but to 
