VORACITY OF THE KAYS. 24i 



biting it in the paroxysm of his anguish. Although both had 

 been hit in the foot, they felt the severest pain in the loins, in 

 the region of the heart, and in the arm-pits. A robust man, 

 wounded by a sting-ray, died in Demarara under the most 

 dreadful convulsions. 



The rays are very voracious ; their food consists of any sort 

 of fish, mollusc, annelide, or crustacean, that they can catch. 

 So powerful are their muscles and jaws that they are able to 

 crush the strong shell of a crab with the greatest ease. Even in 

 our seas they attain a considerable size. Thomas Willoughby 

 makes mention of a single skate of two hundred pounds' weight, 

 which was sold in the fish market at Cambridge to the cook of 

 St. John's College, and was found sufficient for the dinner of a 

 society, consisting of more than a hundred and twenty persons. 

 Dr. Gr. Johnston measured a sharp-nosed ray at Berwick, which 

 was seven feet nine inches long and eight feet three inches 

 broad. But our European rays are far from equalling the 

 colossal dimensions of the sea- devil of the Pacific. This terrific 

 monster swims fast, and often appears on the surface of the 

 ocean, where its black unwieldy back looks like a huge stone 

 projecting above the waters. It attains a breadth of twelve 

 or fifteen feet, and Lesson was presented by a fisherman of 

 Borabora with a tail five feet long. The Society Islanders 

 catch the hideous animal with harpoons, and make use of its 

 rough skin as rasps or files in the manufacture of their wooden 

 utensils. 



Creatures so voracious and well armed as the rays would have 

 attained a dangerous supremacy in the maritime domains had 

 they equalled most other fishes in fecundity. Fortunately for 

 their neighbours, they seldom produce more than one young at 

 a time, which, as in the sharks, is enclosed in a four-cornered 

 capsule ending in slender points, but not, as in the former, pro- 

 duced into long filaments. 



Thus nature has in this case set bounds to the increase of a 

 race which else might have destroyed the balance of marine 

 existence; in most fishes, however, she has been obliged to 

 provide against the danger of extinction by a prodigal abund- 

 ance of new germs. If the cod did not annually produce more 

 than nine millions of eggs, and the sturgeon more than seven ; 

 if the flat-fish, mackerels, and herrings, did not multiply by 



