74 MAMMALIA. 



sudden and unexpected meeting with the king of fish, who ranged 

 himself on their side, not onlj^ as foretelling an ap^jroaching 

 victor)-, but also as a certain omen that the queen would be 

 happily delivered of a dauphin, which was true ; for four days 

 afterwards the dauphin was born." 



This dauphin, whose entrance into the world was so strangely 

 annomiced, according to the saying of the sailors, during the 

 preludes of a naval battle, was the future Louis XIV. 



The ancients have singidarly loaded with fables the history of 

 the Dolphin. According to them, it was a mild, familiar animal, 

 sensible to music. It had assisted Neptune in finding his Amphi- 

 trite. Philantes, after being shipwrecked on the coast of Italy, 

 had been saved by a Dolphin. Arion, threatened with death by 

 the sailors of the ship of which he was on board, having thrown 

 himself into the sea, was picked up by a Dolphin, attracted by the 

 sweet notes of his lyre, and conveyed safely into harbour on the 

 animal's back. Apollo took the form of a Dolphin when he con- 

 ducted his colony to the Delphian shores. Neptune changed him- 

 self into a Dolphin when he carried off Melanthus, &c. And so 

 this marvellous creature was, among the ancients, the object of 

 religious worship. Neptune was adored at Sunium, ruider the 

 form of the Cetacean dear to his lover ; and the Delphian ApoUo, 

 honoured at Delphi, had Dolphins as his symbol. 



As the figures which adorned this temple dated from the most 

 distant period, they were coarsely executed and inexact. When 

 art had made some progress, the Grecian artists employed to 

 rcpi'oduce these same images did not like to make any change in 

 their drawings, which had been consecrated by tradition, and the 

 image of the Delphian Dolphins was perpetuated in painting and 

 sculpture. It is for this reason that modern painters and sculptors 

 represent the Dolphin still as did the Greek artists of the time of 

 Homer — that is to say, with the tail elevated, the head large, the 

 mouth enormous, &c. 



These fables, these admirations, these superstitions, inherited 

 from antiquity, have been preserved in the different countries 

 which border on the Mediterranean Sea. Among many peoples the 

 Dolphin has remained, as Lacepede tells us, a symbol of the sea. 



" Twisted round a trident," adds this naturalist, " it represented 

 the liberty of commerce ; placed round a tripod, it signified the 



