284 THE MINDS AND MANNERS 



wolves incessantly for several days, and every wolf they 

 wounded was immediately killed and devoured by its pack 

 mates. 



In captivity, a large proportion of mammals fight, more or 

 less; and the closer the confinement, the greater their nervous- 

 ness and irritability, and the more fighting. Monkeys fight 

 freely and frequently. Serpents, lizards, and alligators rarely 

 do, although large alligators are prone to bite off the tails or 

 legs of their small companions, or even to devoiir them whole. 

 Storks, trumpeter swans, darters, jays, and some herons are so 

 quarrelsome and dangerous that they must be kept well sepa- 

 rated from other species, to prevent mutilation and murder. 

 In 1900, when a pair of trumpeter swans were put upon a lake 

 in Prospect Park, Brooklyn, with three brown pelicans for 

 associates, they promptly assailed the pelicans, dug holes in 

 their backs, and killed all three. The common red sqmrrel is 

 a persistent fighter of the gray species, and, although inferior 

 in size, nearly always wins. 



A Fight Between a Whale and a Swordfish. One 01 

 the strangest wild animal combats on record was thus described 

 in the Proceedings of the Zoological Society of London, for 1909. 



"Mr. Malcolm Maclaren, through Mr. C. Davies Sherborn, 

 F. Z. S., called the attention of the Fellows to an account of 

 a fight between a whale and a swordfish observed by the crew 

 of the fishing-boat 'Daisy' in the Hauraki GuU, between Ponui 

 Island and Coromandel, as reported in the 'Auckland Weekly 

 News,' 19th Nov., 1908. A cow whale and her calf were 

 attacked by a 12 ft. 6 in. swordfish, the object of the fish being 

 the caJf. The whale plunged about and struck in all directions 

 with her flukes. Occasionally the fins of the swordfish were 

 seen as he rose from a dive, his object apparently being to 

 strike from below. For over a quarter of an hour the whale 

 circled round her calf, lashing furiously and churning up the 

 water so that the assailant was unable to secure a good oppor- 

 tunity for a thrust. At last, after a fruitless dive, the swordfish 



