Giant Fish of Florida 
tail leaping high in the air, then merely touching the water 
again like a ricocheting shell and again soaring aloft, a series 
of such leaps taking it quite a hundred yards over the surface, 
is, to say the least of it, a novel spectacle to those just out from 
Europe, the seas of which do not afford these apparitions. It 
is as if the monster fish were suddenly tenanted by the 
wandering spirit of a defunct kangaroo, and when it is added 
that its aerial leaps often bring it quite close to the boats— 
though I do not remember hearing of a single case in which it 
actually jumped into one—it will be seen that there is some 
excuse for the occasional signs of alarm evoked by its sudden 
appearance. The splash with which it regains the water can, 
on still days, be heard quite a mile away. 
The swimming action of these great rays is very beautiful, 
displaying all the graceful undulating movements so character- 
istic of the shark tribe, which go so far towards mitigating the 
repulsive appearance of some of them. There is always this 
striking contrast between the live and dead shark ; the one, 
though endowed with instincts that can never commend it to 
our goodwill, is yet a very lithe and graceful robber ; the 
other, deprived of all life and movement, shows only the vices 
with none of the redeeming beauty. 
A more characteristic pose of the rays, however, is that of 
lying motionless, or, at most, with its disc slightly undulating with 
respiration, on the sand just under water. Sometimes, indeed, 
they are found lying a yard or so above low-water mark in pits 
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