BLOCH ON THE SWORD-FISH. 339 



Statius Miiller, the skiu is phosphorescent at night. Although such large fishes are not usually 

 well flavored, this one is considered palatable. Pieces of the belly and the tail are especially 

 esteemed, and hence they are expensive. The fins are salted and sold under the name ' callo\ . . . 



" ^lian errs in saying that it enters fresh water, and in cataloguing it among the fishes of the 

 Danube." 



ALLtrsiONS TO THE SwoED-PiSH IN AMERICA BY EABLY WEiTEES. — The ancient city of 

 Siena, secluded and almost forgotten among the hills of Northern Italy, should have a peculiar 

 interest for Americans. Here Christopher Columbus was educated, and here, in the height of his 

 triumphs as a discoverer, he chose to deposit a memento of his first voyage across the seas. His 

 votive offering hangs over the portal of the old collegiate church, closed for many years, and rarely 

 visited save by enterprising American tourists. It consists of the helmet and armor worn by the 

 discoverer when he first planted his feet on New World earth, his weaijons, and the weai^on of a 

 warrior killed by his part5'^ when approaching the American coast — the sword of a Sword-fish.' 



It is not probable that Columbus, or some of his crew, seafaring men of the Mediterranean, 

 had never seen the Sword-fish. Still, its sword was treasured up by them, and has formed for 

 more than four centuries and a half a striking feature in the best preserved monument of the 

 discoverer of America. 



The earliest allusion in literature to the existence of the Sword-fish in the Western Atlantic 

 seems to occur in Josselyn's "Account of Two Voyages to New England," printed in 1674, in the 

 following passage : 



First Voyage : — " The Twentieth day, we saw a great number of Sea-bats, or Owles, called 

 also flying fish, they are about the bigness of a Whiting, with four tinsel wings, with which they 

 fly as long as they are wet, when pursued by other fish?s. Here likewise we saw many Grand 

 pisces, or Herring-hogs, hunting the scholes of Herrings, in the afternoon we saw a great fish 

 called the Vehuella or Sword-fish, having a long, strong and sharp Ann like a Sword-blade on the 

 top of his head, with which he pierced our Ship, and broke it off with striving to get loose, one of 

 our Sailors dived and brought it abo?«rd." 



A half century later I find a reference in Catesby's work.^ 



Pennant, though aware of the statement made by Catesby, refuses the species a place in his 

 "List of the Fishes of North America," ^ supposing him to refer to the orca or high-finned killer- 

 whale: "I am not certain whether Catesby does not mean the high-finned Cachalot by his Sword- 

 fish; yet, as it is found in most seas, even to those of Ceylon (Mr. Sotur), I give it a place here." 



Catesby's testimony was soon confirmed by Dr. Alexander Garden. This enthusiastic col- 

 lector, through whose correspondence with Liunseus so many of our Southern plants and animals 

 were first brought to knowledge and named, writes to John Ellis, from Charleston, South Carolina, 

 March 25, 1755 : "I have sent .>ou one of the rostrums of a fish found on the Florida coast, which 

 I take to be a species of the ZipMas rostr. apioe emiforme, pinnis ventralibus nullis.^ I have been 

 told that they are frequently found on the Carolina coast, thongh I have never seen any of them, 

 and I have been all along the coast to the Florida shore."' (Vol. i, p. 353.) 



iFor this fact, which I do nol; remember to have ever seen on record, I am indebted to Col. N. D, Wilkins, of 

 the Detroit Free Press, who visited tbe locality in 1879. 



^HistoriaNaturalis Caroliuse, &c., 1731. 



'Arctic Zoology, iii, 1784, p. 364. 



^The name by -which this fish was designated in the earlier editions of Linnseus's writings. 



*A Selection of the Curiespoudeuce of Linnaeus and other Naturalists, from the original manuscripts. By Sir 

 James Edward Smith, M. D., P. R. S,, &c.; pn sident of tHr Linnseau Society. In two volumps London. Printed 

 for Longman, Hurst, Bees, Orme and Brown, Paternoster Row, 1821. 



