THE ATLANTIC OCEAN. 201 
ing-fish were about to drop! Sometimes this catas- 
trophe took place at too great a distance for us to 
see from the deck exactly what happened; but on 
our mounting high into the rigging, we may be said 
to have been in at the death; for then we could dis- 
cover that the unfortunate little creatures, one after 
another, either popped right into the Dolphin’s jaws 
as they lighted on the water, or were snapped up 
instantly afterwards. 
“Tt was impossible not to take an active part with 
our pretty little friends of the weaker side, and ac- 
cordingly we very speedily had our revenge. The 
middies and the sailors, delighted with the chance, 
rigged out a dozen or twenty lines from the jib- 
boom end and spritsail-yard-arms with hooks, baited 
merely with bits of tin, the glitter of which re- 
sembles so much that of the body and wings of the 
Flying-fish, that many a proud Dolphin, making 
sure of a delicious morsel, leaped in rapture at the 
deceitful prize.”* 
Though these and other recorded anecdotes indu- 
bitably refer to the bright pearly fishes just described, 
there cannot be a doubt that the same habits are 
found to mark the true Cetaceous Dolphins; while 
at the same time I confess that I do not recollect any 
instance in which such pursuit has been witnessed, in 
my own experience, or recorded in books of voyages. 
Indeed T do not conceive that the chase of the Flying- 
fish by the Coryphene has been often witnessed, nor 
that it can be considered as any other than a rare 
occurrence. As the aerial boundings of the Flying- 
* Frag. Voy. and Trav. Second Series. Vol. i. p. 224. 
