i212 FISH—CULTURAL ASSOCIATION. 
under our bottom, and laid as quiet as a lamb for an hour and 
a half, and never moved a fin. Where they had been a-thrash- 
ing of her the sea was just like blood. I have seen these ‘ere 
thrashers fly out of the water as high as the mast head and down 
upon the whale, while the swordfish was a-pricking of ’im up 
from underneath. There is always two of ’em, One up and one 
under, and I think they hunts together; and you can see the 
poor whale blow up in great agitation ; and | be bound the pair 
of ’em don’t leave him until they have their penn’orth out of 
him. It is just for wengeance they does it. Whether Master 
Whale has offended them or not, it’s hard to tell. If they eats 
him they must have a tidy blow-out of him, but I don’t think 
they like the oil. I saw one engagement off the Staples; it was 
all two or three hours they was at it. I don’t think they leaves 
him till they kills him.” 
Egede puts on record the belief of Danish explorers of the 
last century : 
“ The swordfish who is the Whales greatest Rae and when 
he kills one eats nothing but his Tongue, leaving the rest to the 
Shark, Walrus and Birds of Prey.” 
The last quotation is especially important, since it shows how 
the swordfish and the killer-whale have been confused. It is 
still held, on good authority, that the killers eat the tongues of 
their victims. 
At a meeting of the Boston Society of Natural History, in 
1864, in reply to a question of Dr, J. B. S. Jackson, about the 
thrasher or swingle-tail shark recently exhibited in Boston, 
Captain Atwood said that they were abundant at Provincetown 
* Hans Egede, Natural History ot Greenland, 1741, p. 37. 
‘Three or four of these voracious animals do not hesitate to grapple with the largest baleen 
whales, and it is surprising to see those leviathans of the deep so completely paralyzed by 
the presence of their natural although diminutive enemies. Frequently the terrified animal— 
comparatively of enormous sizeand superior strength—evinces no effort to escape, but lies in 
a helpless condition, or makes but little resistance to the assaults of its merciless destroyer. 
The attack of these wolves of the ocean upon their gigantic prey may be likened, in some 
respects, to a pack of hounds holding the stricken deer at bay. They cluster about the 
animal’s head, some of their number breaching over it, while others seize it by the lips and 
haul the bleeding monster under water ; and when captured, should the mouth be open, they . 
eat out its tongue. We saw an attack made by three killers upon a cow whale and her calf, 
ina lagoon on the coast of Lower California, in the spring of 1858. The whale was of the 
California gray species,and her young was grcwn to three times the bulk of the largest 
