FISHES. 



365 



found on the sea coast of New York, It is about 

 eight inches long. The tentacula or feelers of this 

 animal, are furnished with many mouths without 

 throats, which are armed with a circular row of 

 teeth to seize their prey. These convey the food to 

 the real or principal mouth, which is armed with a 

 beak, resembling the rostrum of a parrot. The 

 creature is furnished with a bag of black liquor for 

 its defence against its enemies. When pursued by 

 them, it ejects this fluid into the water through a par- 

 ticular orifice in the anterior part of its body. The 

 water is darkened and rendered of an inky colour 

 thereby, so that its adversary is enveloped in a cloud, 

 while the sepia suddenly darting backward with a 

 spring to the distance of several feet, makes its es- 

 cape. It is very amusing to view them thus em- 

 ploying the means of self defence. Some of the 

 larger species of the sepia, are said to be the chief 

 food of the spermaceti whale (physeter macroce- 

 phalus), and the likenesses or impressions of their 

 beaks are frequently seen in ambergris, which is 

 said, by the more intelligent of our Nantucket whale- 

 men, to be but indurated excrement of that animal 

 in a constipated state of the intestinum rectum.* 



The thresher^ ox long -^tailed shark. 



This fish was found on the south side of Long 

 Island in the autumn of 1803, by James Fairlie, Esq. 

 He made a drawing and description of the animal 

 and communicated them to Dr. Mitchell shortly 

 after. It is evidently a different species from that 

 figured by Pennant in his British Zoology. f This 



* Med. Repos. vol. A, p. 199. 



t This opinion of Dr. Mitchell is confirmed by the account given in 



