172 The Devil-fish of Jamaica. 



sition the stretch, and strain of all the boats pulling away from 

 hini, could not move him. Slackening their tension they en- 

 ticed him inch by inch to rise. He once more was afloat, when 

 a shower of musket-balls and pikes literally riddled him through 

 and through. Though wounded in this way, he still floated 

 alive. Until this capture was effected by Lieutenant St. John 

 of the artillery and his military companions, it was supposed 

 that a sea-devil was beyond the main and might of human art 

 or strength. The dimension of this fish was not more than 

 half that of the common size — it was only fifteen feet in width. 

 A man, however, entered its mouth with ease, the space being 

 two feet and a half. 



Lieutenant Lamont says, that wishing to know what the 

 sea-devil fed upon, he saw the stomach opened. It was round, 

 and studded with circular spots of a muscular substance. It 

 had transverse muscular layers from one end to the other, and 

 contained nothing but slime and gravel. The weight of the 

 fish was so great that with difficulty forty men, with two lines 

 attached to it, dragged it along the ground. 



In the account of the fish taken in Delaware Bay, it is stated 

 that, drawing a boat after it with the celerity of a whale when 

 harpooned, it caused a wave to rise on each side the trough of 

 the sea several feet higher than the boat; that during the 

 scuffle the vast fins of the fish lashed the sea with such vehe- 

 mence that the spray rose to the height of thirty feet, and 

 rained dropping water around to the distance of fifty feet; and 

 yet the measurement of this fish was only half that of the 

 generality of those seen, being only eighteen feet in breadth. 

 Three pairs of oxen, one horse, and twenty-two men, all pulling 

 together, with the surge of the Atlantic to help, could barely 

 convey it on to the dry beach. 



When Lieutenant Lamont speaks of the cavity of the mouth 

 being so wide that two men could be seated within it, it must 

 be remembered that the Cephaloptera — added to a much greater 

 degree of extension than is common with the ray tribe — has a 

 mouth and stomach constructed without any intervening oeso- 

 phagus. Both form together but one cavity, and the dimen- 

 sions are disproportionately large to the bulk of the body.* 



The largest of these fishes that ever came under my own 

 eyes was when I was on board a vessel of Bordeaux, on my 

 way from Haiti to France. We had just cleared the last of the 

 Bahamas, and as we gently scudded onward with the wind on 

 our beam, we sailed close along one of the Cephalopteras 



* Lorenzini's account of the torpedo's structure is : — " Lo stomacho e con- 

 tinuato con la bocca, una sola, et una raedisima cavita, la quale a proporzione de 

 la animal e vasla." Quoted by Dr. John Davy, in his account of the torpedo 

 Researches Physiological and Anatomical, vol. ii. 



