670 Marvels of the Universe 
Ji 
tS SE 
ee Lec di eles 
GATvaLugasniae mere 
2 
TB te me 
in ET 
Photo by] [J. J. Ward, IES. 
THE HARLEQUIN BEETLE. 
The development of the forelegs is peculiar to the male 
insect. Its colouring is red, w ite and black, and the total 
length of the Beetle is over a foot. 
creatures ; though how, when spitted, they are 
removed from the sword and conveyed to the 
mouth is a mystery. But besides whales are often — 
attacked, and with savage ferocity. They are 
stabbed again and again, till at last they die of 
exhaustion and loss of blood. Yet it is difficult 
to grasp why such monsters as whales should be 
slain thus, for the Sword-fish certainly cannot 
swallow his victim whole, and it is equally hard to 
see how he could do so even piecemeal, being 
toothless. But the fact remains that whales are 
slain thus. Occasionally, however, the Sword-fish 
makes a disastrous mistake, as when, for example, 
full of fury, he drives at the hull of a ship 
apparently in mistake for the body of a whale. 
For such an unfortunate error there is no re- 
covery: the attack was unprovoked, and the 
penalty incurred is a heavy one—either the sword 
must be left behind, or the owner must be 
ignominiously drawn after the ship till he dies! 
And this because, from the tremendous force of 
the blow, the weapon is driven in so far as to 
make withdrawal impossible, for solid timber will 
not yield like living flesh. In the Museum of the 
College of Surgeons is a section of the bow of a 
South Sea whaler transfixed by the end of one of 
these swords, measuring one foot long and five 
inches in circumference. In the British Museum 
of Natural History two similar illustrations of 
this kind are to be seen. In the one case a sword 
has pierced no less than twenty-seven inches of 
timber ; in the other are remains of ¢hyee swords 
all close together, and broken off short in the 
middle of a piece of timber a foot thick. When 
so long ago as 1795 H.M.S. Leopard was repairing, 
a sword was found which had gone through one 
inch of sheathing, a three inch plank, and beyond 
to a depth of nearly six inches into solid timber. 
The men engaged on the work of repairing esti- 
mated that it would have taken nine strokes of a 
twenty-five-pound hammer to drive a bolt of 
similar size and form to the same depth into this 
hull—yet this was accomplished by a single thrust 
of the fish ! 
To withstand the tremendous lateral shock to 
which the vertebral column must be subjected by 
such charges a peculiar and remarkable mechanism 
has been provided. The spine, which in most 
fishes rises from the top of each segment of the 
