THE LUMINOUS SC OP EL US. 
283 
This fish is very plentiful in the rivers of Guiana and Brazil, where it swims in large 
troops, and is, according to many accounts, a very unpleasant neighbor. It is a most vora- 
cious being, with teeth nearly as sharply edged as those of the shark, and a boldness little 
short of that fish’s well-known audacity. It is said, according to Spix, that if even so large 
an animal as an ox happens to get into one of their shoals, it is immediately assailed, and 
bitten so severely that it may succumb under its injuries before it can cross a stream thirty or • 
forty feet in width. According to some authors, one of the South American tribes are in the 
habit of placing their dead in the streams, leaving them to the attacks of the Piraya, which in 
a single night will clear away the whole of the soft parts, and leave a clean skeleton ready for 
their peculiar mode of sepulture. Even living human beings seem to enjoy no immunity from 
this hungry fish, but to be liable to severe bites while bathing. 
Be these stories literally true, or only exaggerations of reality, the jaws and teeth of the 
Piraya are perfectly capable of inflicting such injuries as have been briefly described. The 
GRAYLING. — Thymallus vulgaris. CHARR .— Salmo salvelinus. 
teeth are nearly flat, triangular, and with edges sharp as those of lancets, and are employed 
by the Macoushi Indians to sharpen the points of those fearful wourali-poisoned arrows so 
well known to fame since they were brought by Mr. Waterton from Guiana. A part of the 
jaw containing five or six teeth is carefully cleansed, a hole is bored through the jaw-bone, and 
a string is passed through the hole and fastened to the edge of the quiver. The arrows are 
readily sharpened by placing the points between any two teeth and drawing them rapidly 
through the edges. There are now before me several of these arrows, kindly given me by Mr. 
Waterton, and which have been sharpened by this process. 
In a neighboring family is placed a very remarkable fish, called the Luminous Scopelus 
{Scopelus stellatus). 
The fish which is represented in the illustration on page 285, may fairly take rank as 
one of the oddities of the finny race. 
Flat-headed, round-bodied, and strong-scaled, with projecting eyes of most remarkable 
