SKATE. 453 



plies as the fowler does on his gun, or the huntsman on 

 his boar-spear. Lying perdu in the sand, and, herself 

 unseen, seeing everything that passes, the wily creature, 

 on discovering a fish of size swimming within reach, sud- 

 denly protrudes the tail, which, uncurling like a spring 

 lasso one instant, has coiled itself the next round the 

 prey, and dragged it below, to impale on the fatal saw- 

 sword. This either summarily despatches it at a blow, 

 or if the victim be strong, a succession of stabs is dealt 

 on the convulsed body with lightning rapidity and cer- 

 tain effect. Such being the potency of this terrible 

 dart, we do not wonder that in early days men should 

 have somewhat exaggerated the truth, that its wounds 

 shoidd have been described not only as painful and mis- 

 chievous, but poisonous, and, like the prick of the rattle- 

 snake's tooth, necessarily mortal. This was the weapon, 

 according to ancient authorities, put by the enchantress 

 Circe into the hands of her son Telegonus, wherewith 

 he slew his father Ulysses ; which, more deadly than 

 the deadly wouraH, was said to kill an animal Ijy mere 

 contact with the skin ; and which, if it but scratched 

 the bark of a tree, forthwith the tree perished. Nothing 

 on sea or land could be conceived (said they) so pestife- 

 rous, immedicable, and fatal to all things endowed with 

 life ! This of course is pure fiction, yet to this day — 

 such is the hereditary mischief caused by a bad name — 

 it would be as easy to persuade a Neapolitan barcarole 

 that a Vesuvian viper had no venom in its tooth, as that 

 the sea-eagle had none in its tail. So strongly are all 

 fishermen possessed of this idea, that did not the enact- 

 ment exist, requiring these fish to be disarmed before im- 

 portation to the market, every man of them would cau- 

 tiously remove the dreaded instrument, partly by way of 

 precaution, and partly to adorn his cabin with another 

 trophy of a poisoned dart, wrenched from a powerful foe 

 he had helped to capture. Besides the sea-eagle, there 



