1556 The Zoologist — Febkuauy, 1869. 



it is the hour of reprisal. Their hiding-places are easily discoverable, 

 and once unearthed the disarmed brigands are lost beyond redemption. 

 ?k!yriads perish in this manner, devoured by other animals, crushed 

 among the stones, or dashed in pieces against the rocks by the move- 

 ment of the waves. The sloughing or shedding operation is more or 

 less frequent, according to the species, the rapidity of increase, and 

 their age. It takes place but once a-year with the decapoda ; but it 

 is of more frequent occurrence among the inferior kinds, whose increase 

 is swift, whose life is short, and which in two or three days repair the 

 loss of their cuirasses." — p. 256. 



Stvord-^'-sh. — " The sword-fish {Xiphias) is placed by Cuvier in the 

 Scomberida;, or mackerel family. Its length sometimes exceeds twenty 

 feet, and its beak measures one-third of its length. It is one of the 

 swiftest denizens of the deep, and endowed with prodigious vigour. 

 Hence it has not unfrequently happened that a sword-fish has struck 

 a ship and driven its blade right through the scantling. The ancient 

 naturalists, and many modern writers, affirm that with the aid of this 

 terrible weapon it attacks the whale, and engages in desperate combats, 

 when the victory is not always to the strongest. But it suffers in its 

 turn from a small crustacean animal, whicli penetrates into its flesh, 

 and sometimes tortures it so keenly that it will dash ashore with a 

 violence fatal to its own life." — p. 322. 



TJtalassUes. — "In my chapter upon the inhabitants of the primteval 

 ocean, I have brought the reader acquainted with those gigantic and 

 terrible animals — half fish, half crocodile — which committed such ter- 

 rible ravages in its waters. The revolutions of the surface of the globe 

 have annihilated these monsters, and the class of reptiles is simply re- 

 presented to-day, in the marine world, by a {ew species, of great size, 

 it is true, but of inoffensive habits, which feed only upon the sea-weed, 

 or at most upon the small mojlusks or zoophytes. All these species 

 beloug to a single family — the Chelonida;, turtles, or marine tortoises. 

 They receive the name of Thalassites (Greek TItalassa, the sea), to 

 distinguish them from the land-tortoises [Tesludinata, Chersites), the 

 marsh tortoises [Eviydcc) and the river tortoises (Potamites). They are 

 the largest of all the ChelonidjB. They differ chiefly from their terres- 

 trial congeners in the conformation of their feet, which, like those of 

 all animals destined to spend their lives in the ocean tracts, are 

 changed into paddle-like fins, and so flattened that the toes cannot 

 execute, one over the other, any voluntary movement. The anterior 

 pair are much longer than the liind feet, and can be used as oars, 



