06 NATURAL HISTORY READER. 



ready, with which lie breaks their skulls as soon as they 

 are caught. 



6. Some fish-hunters use other fish to hunt their game, 

 as we use pointers and setters, such as the little pilot-fish, 

 which leads the huge shark to his prey ; though this has 

 been disputed, because the pilot-fish has been known to 

 follow and play about a vessel just as it does usually about 

 the body of a shark. The probability is, that the pilot-fish 

 is a species of parasite or diner-out, who will make particu- 

 lar friends with any big person who will feed him, and no 

 doubt would find food in the refuse cast from the vessel, 

 even as he would from the fragments torn off by the shark 

 when feeding on any large body. Doubtless, too, there is 

 a certain amount of protection obtained from consortiug 

 with monsters against other predaceous fish. The fact of 

 the pilot-fish conducting the shark to his prey has been 

 disputed, but veritable instances related by eye-witnesses 

 leave no doubt that at times it does fulfill this office for 

 the shark. Nor is there anything singular in the fact. 

 The pilot-fish is on the lookout for his own dinner, proba- 

 bly, but will not venture on it until his protector has 

 helped himself. We have numerous similar instances both 

 in human and in beast life. 



7. The reader, possibly, has never witnessed a skiill in 

 Scandinavia. It is a species of hunt in which a number 

 of sportsmen take in a wide space of ground where game 

 exists, drawing a cordon around it, narrowing their cir- 

 cle little by little, and driving the game together into 

 a flock, when they shoot them down. Now there are fish 

 who hunt their game in the same way. Mr. Lonee, while 

 fishing off the Channel Islands, witnessed a skiill of this 

 kind. His attention was called to several porpoises, which 

 seemed to be engaged in a water-frolic, swimming after one 

 another in a circle, and he pointed it out to Peter, the fish- 

 erman who accompanied him. 



