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The Albacore 



thirty miles an hour. And that he maintains that 

 speed for distances of over a thousand yards broken 

 into several different directions, as the flying-fish 

 changed its aerial course in order to try and dodge 

 its deadly foe. Also, I have repeatedly witnessed 

 its dash into a school of its smaller relatives, the skip- 

 jack, like a flash from the mouth of a gun, and, zig- 

 zagging back and forth so rapidly that the eye could 

 scarcely follow it through the bewildered school, leave 

 the sea over a large area befouled with blood and 

 fragments of mangled fish, which the survivors, imme- 

 diately upon their enemy's departure, bestirred them- 

 selves to devour. 



Paucity of food it apparently never suffers or can 

 suffer from, its natural prey being so wondrously 

 abundant wherever it roams. And in consequence 

 a poor, thin, and weak Albacore is never seen. Perhaps 

 such an one would be promptly devoured by its ex-_ 

 traordinary ravenous congeners. The strength of the 

 Albacore is as amazing as its speed. I have seen a 

 strong man's arms completely paralysed in one minute 

 through trying to hold a very small one, only twenty- 

 five pounds in weight, with his fingers clutching its 

 neck and his thumbs thrust into the gills. The hot, 

 black-red blood literally boiled out of his hands as 

 the dying fish's vibrations shook him like some great 

 galvanic battery. And for hours after he was imable 

 to use his arms in any way. 



--^ Its extreme limit of size is, of course, indeterminate, 

 but there are fairly authentic records of individuals 

 having been taken off Sicily of twelve hundred pounds' 

 weight. In the world-renowned tunny fisheries of 

 the Italian and SiciUan coasts, where they are known 

 as the Tunny, they are probably found larger than 

 anywhere else. As the Tuiia, they are weU known 



