DECEMBER 20, 1918] 
In 1901, Kishinouye of the Imperial Fish- 
eries Bureau, Tokyo, Japan, published an 
interesting description with a crude figure of 
a Rhineodon taken in Japan which he thought 
to be a new species and which he named 
pentalineatus. Apparently this paper was re- 
produced in Japanese as follows: “ On Yasuri- 
zame (Rhinodon pentalineatus),” ete., Dobuts. 
Zasshi, Tokyo, 1908, Vol. 15, 41-44. This 
journal I have not been able to locate in 
America, and my letters to Mr. Kishinouye 
have seemingly gone astray, but the conjecture 
expressed above seems reasonable. 
Our next and last reference is to the occur- 
rence of this fish in the Philippines, where 
however, it is not entirely unknown since Dr. 
H. M. Smith,1* the present U. S. Commis- 
sioner of Fisheries, has put on record (1911) 
an 18-foot specimen taken at Negros Occiden- 
tal in 1910. Again Dr. David Starr Jordan" 
in 1915 recorded the capture of a 20-foot 
specimen at the island of Zebu in March of 
that year. However this last reference in 
question dates back to 1835 when one Captain 
H. Piddington published in the Journal of the 
Asiatic Society of Bengal a “Notice of an 
Extraordinary Fish.” His account is so cir- 
cumstantial and so fascinatingly interesting 
that it seems best to quote him verbatim. 
In December, 1816, I commanded a small Span- 
ish brig, and was lying at anchor in the Bay of 
Mariveles, at the entrance of the Bay of Manilla. 
One day, about noon, hearing a confusion upon 
deck, I ran up, and looking over the side, 
thought, from what I saw, that the vessel had 
parted [her chain] and was drifting over a bank 
of white sand and coral, with large black spots. 
I called out to let go another anchor, but my peo- 
ple, Manilla men, all said, ‘‘No Sir; it’s only the 
chacon!’’ and upon running up the rigging, I saw 
indeed that I had mistaken the motion of the 
spotted back of an enormous fish passing under 
the vessel, for the vessel itself driving over a 
bank! My boatswain (contramestre), a Cadiz man, 
12 Smith, H. M., ‘‘ Note on the Occurrence of the 
Whale Shark, Rhinodon typicus, in the Philippine 
Islands,’’ Proceedings Biological Society of Wash- 
ington, 1911, Vol. 24, p. 97. 
13s Jordan, David Starr, Science, 1915, March 
26, p. 463. 
SCIENCE 
625 
with great foolhardiness jumped into the boat with 
four men, and actually succeeded in harpooning 
the fish with the common dolphin-harpoon, or 
grains, as they are usually called, to which he made 
fast the deep-sea line; but they were towed at 
such a fearful rate out to sea, that they were glad 
to eut from it immediately. 
From the view I had of the fish, and the time it 
took to pass slowly under the vessel, I should 
suppose it not less than 70 or 80 feet in length. 
Its breadth was very great in proportion, perhaps 
not less than 30 feet. The back was so spotted, 
that, had it been at rest, it must have been taken 
for a coral shoal, the appearance of which is fa- 
miliar to seamen. I did not distinguish the head 
or fins well, from being rather short-sighted, and 
there being some confusion on board. 
As my people seemed to look upon ‘‘the cha- 
con,’’ as they called it, almost in the light of an 
old acquaintance, which it was to many of them 
who had served in the Spanish gun-boat service, I 
made many inquiries of them, of which the fol- 
lowing is the result. 
‘¢1, That there were formerly two of these mon- 
sters, and that they lived (teniam su casa) in a 
cluster of rocks, called Los Puercos, at the south- 
west entrance of the bay of Mariveles; but that, 
about ten or fifteen years before this time, or say 
in 1800, one was driven on shore, and died close to 
the village in the bay; the inhabitants of which 
were compelled by the stink to abandon their 
houses for a time. 
‘2. That the remaining one frequented the 
bay of Mariveles and that of Manilla, and it was 
supposed that it often attacked and destroyed 
small fishing boats, which, never appeared after 
going out to fish, though no bad weather had oc- 
curred. This last account I afterwards found 
singularly corroborated. 
‘¢3. That it was considered as dangerous by the 
Spanish gunboats; that they always when there 
kept a swivel loaded, the report of which, they 
said, drove it away. My principal informant was 
a man, employed as pilot for the ports in the 
Philippine Islands, whither I was bound, who had 
passed his whole life in the gun-boats. He said 
that one instance of its voracity occurred when he 
was present. A man, who was pushed overboard 
in the hurry to look at the monster, being instantly 
swallowed by it. 
‘¢4, The native fishermen of the Bay of Manilla 
quite corroborate this account, and speak of the 
monster with great terror.’’ 
About 1820 or 1821, an American ship’s boat, 
