76 
ZOOLOGICAL SOCIETY BULLETIN 
connected with the old Castle Garden building 
than its present use as the greatest of all 
aquariums. 
During the past few r years all the exhibition 
tanks on the ground floor have been more than 
doubled in size by extending their rear walls 
backward. They now correspond in size with 
those of the best aquariums in Europe. This 
improvement was effected chiefly through funds 
supplied by the Zoological Society. 
It has already resulted in doubling the living 
collections. With the construction of still larger 
and better tanks in the old pump-room space, a 
further increase can he effected, and the New 
York Aquarium will have more than twice the 
exhibits of the largest foreign aquarium. 
An addition to the equipment that has always 
been needed, is a sunny space for the keeping 
of such cold-blooded forms as turtles, frogs and 
salamanders, none of which have thrived in the 
sunless quarters hitherto available. The balcony 
space to be gained in the proposed alterations, 
will permit of the location of these exhibits in 
well lighted quarters on the south side of the 
building, together with many small fresh-water 
Ashes from the tropics, that the Aquarium has 
not yet attempted to keep for lack of proper 
facilities. 
Few persons are aware that the Aquarium 
already has a high class mechanical equipment 
for the keeping of its living collections. The 
concrete reservoir under Battery Park, contain¬ 
ing 100,000 gallons of pure stored sea-water is 
the equal of any abroad and serves its purpose 
admirably. Its new electric pumping plant, the 
gift of Mrs. Sage, is the best in the world. 
The Aquarium is however, something more 
than a mere exhibition of aquatic life. It is in 
fact a public museum and always has been 
called upon to render the educational and other 
services demanded of such an institution. With 
the f acilities now granted, its actic lties w 1 11 be 
expanded and its position in the life of the City 
become of still greater interest. 
THE SWORDFISH AND THRESHER 
SHARK DELUSION 
By C. H. Townsend 
I N these days, with all the world in the nature 
class to some extent, and with a million 
cameras making records of what happens in 
the animal world, the persistence of old-time 
misconceptions in natural history is a fact na¬ 
turalists still have to reckon with. 
Many of them, like the “hoop snake,” “sea 
serpent” and “Are salamander” myths, are en¬ 
dowed with a vitality that seems to outlast all 
teaching to the contrary. They cling to certain J 
kinds of minds like mortar to a brick. 
One of the long-enduring kind is the fable of 
the whale and its alleged enemies the swordfish 
and the thresher shark. It appears in the news¬ 
papers every summer in the accustomed form; 
passengers on a liner have seen at a distance a 
great commotion in which the whale appears to 
be the object of a violent attack. They have 
been told by the officers that the sw r ordfish 
and the thresher are the aggressors, and the 
reporters present the account of what w r as 
supposed to have happened, in more or less in¬ 
teresting form. 
The officers of the big liners being, presum¬ 
ably, neither whalers nor naturalists, it is un¬ 
likely that their opinions on this matter are 
of value. 
The late Professor Goode, distinguished 
ichthyologist, who studied the swordfish more 
thoroughly than any other naturalist says: 
“Skeptical modern science is not satis¬ 
fied with this interpretation of any combat 
at sea seen at a distance. It recognizes the 
improbability of aggressive partnership 
between two animals so different as the 
swordfish and a shark, and explains the 
turbulent encounters occasionally seen at 
sea by ascribing them to the attacks of the 
killer-whale, Orca.” 
The killer-whale (Orca gladiator ) is a large 
carnivorous porpoise, reaching a length of about 
thirty feet, and is armed with formidable teeth. 
Killers hunt in packs, destroying wfliales, por¬ 
poises and seals, and are able to swallow both 
seals and porpoises entire. 
In attacking wdiales, some of them tear away 
the lips and tongue, while others seize the fins, 
or leap from the w r ater and deal heavy and far- 
sounding blows by falling on the whale’s back. 
In making such leaps, they sometimes breach 
clean over it. 
Killers roam all oceans and are veritable 
marine wolves in the destruction of their prey. 
Let Captain Scammon, shipmaster, wflialer 
and naturalist, who has given the world one of 
its best books on the whales, tell about this 
enemy of the whale: “We saw an attack made 
by three killers upon a cow whale and her calf. 
They made alternate assaults upon the old 
whale and her offspring, finally killing the lat¬ 
ter, which sank to the bottom, wdiere the water 
