SWORDFISH 



is hard to surmise. We are all familiar with the 

 couplet from Oppian: 



Nature her bounty to his mouth confined. 

 Gave him a sword, but left unarmed his mind. 



It surely seems as if temporary insanity some- 

 times takes possession of the fish. It is not strange 

 that when harpooned it should retaliate by attack- 

 ing its assailant. An old swordfisherman told Mr. 

 Blackman that his vessel had been struck twenty 

 times. There are, however, many instances of en- 

 tirely unprovoked assaults on vessels at sea. Many 

 of these are recounted in a later portion of this 

 memoir. Their movements when feeding are dis- 

 cussed below as well as their alleged peculiarities 

 of movement during breeding season. 



It is the universal testimony of our fishermen that 

 two are never seen swimming close together. Cap- 

 tain Ashby says that they are always distant from 

 each other at least thirty or forty feet. 



The pugnacity of the swordfish has become a by- 

 word. Without any special effort on my part, 

 numerous instances of their attacks upon vessels 

 have in the last ten years found their way into the 

 pigeonhole labeled "Swordfish." 



^lian says (b. XXXII, c. 6) that the swordfish has 

 a sharp-pointed snout with which it is able to pierce 

 the sides of a ship and send it to the bottom, in- 

 stances of which have been known near a place 

 in Mauritania known as Cotte, not far from the river 

 Sixus, on the African side of the Mediterranean. 

 He describes the sword as like the beak of the ship 



159 



