THE SWORD-FISH. 
SWORD-FISH, SPEAR-FISH, AND CUTLASS-FISH. 
Toward the sea turning my troubled eye 
I saw the fish, (if fish I may it cleepe) 
That makes the sea before his face to flye 
And with his flaggie finnes doth seeme to sweepe 
The foamie waves out of the dreadful deep. 
The huge Leviathan, dame Nature’s wonder, 
Making his sport, that manie makes to weepe ; 
A Sword-fish small, him from the rest did sunder. 
That, in his throat him prickingly softly under, 
His wide abysse him forced forth to spewe, 
That all the sea did roare like heavens thunder, 
And all the waves were stained with filthie hewe. 
Hereby I learned have not to despise 
Whatever thing seems small in common eyes. 
Edmund Spenser, The Visions of the World, 1591. 
9 I 'HE Sword-fish, Xiphias gladius, ranges along the Atlantic coast of 
America from Jamaica, latitude i8° N., Cuba, and the Bermudas, to 
Cape Breton, latitude 47 0 N. It has not been seen at Greenland, Iceland, 
or Spitzbergen, but occurs, according to Collett, at the North Cape, latitude 
71 0 . It is abundant along the coasts of Western Europe, entering the 
Baltic and the Mediterranean. I can find no record of the species on the 
west coast of Africa, south of the Cape Verdes, though Liitken, who may 
have access to facts unknown to me, states that they occur clear down to 
the Cape of Good Hope, South Atlantic in mid-ocean, to the west coast 
of South America and to Southern California, latitude 34 0 , New Zealand, 
and in the Indian Ocean, off Mauritius. 
The names of the Sword-fish all have reference to that prominent feature, 
the prolonged snout. The “ Sword-fish” of our own tongue, the 
<( Zwacird-fis' n of the Hollander, the Italian “ Sofia ” and “ Pesce-spada 
