126 STING RAY. Class IV. 



Circe, armed her son with a spear headed with 

 the spine of the Trygon, as the most irresistible 

 weapon she could furnish him with, and with 

 which he afterwards committed parricide, unin- 

 tentionally, on his father Ulysses. 



That spears and darts might, in very early 

 times, have been headed with this bone instead 

 of iron, we have no kind of doubt: that of 

 another species of this fish being still used to 

 point the arrows of some of the South Ame- 

 rican Indians, and is, from its hardness, sharp- 

 ness, and beards, a most dreadful weapon. 

 But in respect to its venomous qualities, there 

 is not the lest credit to be given to the opinion, 

 though it was believed (as far as it affected the 

 animal world) by Rondeletius, Aldrovand, and 

 others, and even to this day by the fishermen in 

 several parts of the kingdom. It is in fact the 

 weapon of offence belonging to the fish, capable 

 of giving a very bad wound, and which is attended 

 with dangerous symptoms, when it falls on a 

 tendinous part, or on a person in a bad habit of 

 body. As to any fish having a spine charged 

 with actual poison, we must deny our assent to 

 it, though the report is sanctified by the name of 

 Linnaeus* 



* Syst. Nat. i. 348. He instances the Pasllnaca, the Tot' 

 pedo, and the Tetrodon lineatus. The first is incapable of con- 



