82 
THE LIVING WORLD. 
pounds, and stores its batteries between its gills and the pectoral fins. It has 
entire control of the exercise and severity of this electric shock. It is suffi¬ 
ciently strong to magnetize needles, decompose certain chemical substances, and 
even to produce the electrical spark of the Leyden jar, requiring similarly 
the completion 
of the circuit. 
The positive 
pole of this nat¬ 
ural battery is 
dorsal, and the 
negative pole is 
ventral. The 
Narcacian spe¬ 
cies is found on 
the Atlantic and 
the Pacific coasts 
of our country, 
and formerly 
was a tenant of 
European w a - 
ters. Whether 
it has immi¬ 
grated, or whe- 
THK sting KAY. th er the Euro¬ 
pean species has 
become extinct, cannot safely be stated, though the question has often been discussed. 
The Saw Fish (. Pristidce) have a shark-like body and a protruding snout, 
whose stout teeth make it resemble a saw. 
Nor does the resemblance stop here, for the 
saw-fish uses this feature as a weapon, which, 
reaching the length of six feet and the breadth 
of a foot, can do terrible execution. The spe¬ 
cies illustrated, pristis antiquarian , is found 
in the tropics, and makes war upon whales, 
herring and mackerel, whose flesh it saws 
out, since its teeth do not enable it to bite. 
Its attacks upon vessels are due not so 
much to its envy of the work of man as to 
a frenzy into which it is sometimes thrown 
by a parasitical crustacean, which, seeking 
its own ends, rather than being considerate 
of the saw-fish, burrows into its flesh. Some 
Spanish fishermen, having unconsciously en¬ 
tangled a sawfish in their nets, would have 
been dragged out to sea but for reinforce¬ 
ments from a man-of-war. Having been brought to the surface of the water 
by the united efforts of five persons, it happened to strike out towards the 
land, and, while thus engaged, a running bowline was thrown over its nose. 
Even then, with the aid of a tree as a capstan, thirty-five men failed to drag it 
BAIAOON FISH. 
