6® S T . J A G O.
species of mackerel, (tffie Scomber pelamis, known to sailors
by the Portuguese name of Bonetta, and the Thymus or
tunny, usually called. Albecor). These are both considered
as esculent, but they have a strong and disagreeable flavour,
aP veU d‘'J and black, and dangerous effects are sometimes
said tp have been produced from eating too freely of them.
The tunny caught in the Mediterranean was commonly used
at. the, feasts of the Romans; yet they entertained an idea
that, under certain circumstances, it was poisonous. The
velocity with which the bonetta and albecqr dart across the
bows of a ship, when sailing at the rate of eight or nine miles
an hour, is almost incredible; it is so rapid that the eye is
np more able to follow them than it can trace a flash of
lightning.
The astonishing velocity, which fishes are capable of exerting
in so dense a medium as water, seems to be owing rather
to their muscular power than to any assistance, they derive
from their fins, beyond that of directing their course. A. strong
instance of this fact may he remarked in the amazing height to
which a salmon will leap through the midst of a water-fall, and
winch he accomplishes more by an effort of muscular strength
than by the action of his pectoral fins, the spreading of
winch indeed would tend to retard rather than accelerate his
progress. But there, are instances, still more extraordinary
than the salmon-leap, of the astonishing power which the
musdqs of fishps are capable of exerting; so very extraordinary
indeed, that were they not authenticated in such a manner .
as . not to leave the possibility of a doubt, they would certainly
be considered as the inventions of voyagers. Ships’
7 '
ST. JA G O. 61
sides of thick oak plank have been completely perforated by
the snout of the sword-fish, not of the common species the
Xiphias gladius, of which we struck one at the entrance of
Porta Praya bay, but another or a t least a variety, of greater
dimensions, being sometimes from twenty to thirty feet in
length, and distinguished by a large spotted back fin, and by
the rounded extremity of the snout or boney process. Van
Schouten of Horne, in liis very entertaining voyage round the
world, about the beginning of the seventeenth century, states
that “ a great fish or a sea monster, having a horn like a
“ common elephant’s tooth, not hollow but full, struck the
ship with such great strength that it entered into three
“ planks of the ship, two of green and one of oaken wood,
“ and into a rib, where it turned upward to their great good
66 fortune.” 11i the year 1801, a Banish ship came into the
Cape of Good Hope, in consequence of springing a leak off
the Brazil' coast.. On examination it was found that she had
been struck by a sword-fish, the snout of which had penetrated
the bottom, where it still remained, having snapt close
to the plank on th e ’exterior side of the vessel. In the same
year a small English’ ship came into Table bay, having received
in the Southern Atlantic a stroke from a sword-fish,
which buried part of the boney snout so deep in the stern-'
post as to impede the action of the rudder. These two facts
cbnsist with my own knowledge, which, together with the
piece of plank from the bottom of an East Indiaman, now in,
the British Museum, transfixed by the .sword of this fish, may
satisfy the doubts of the most sceptical on a subject which
was known to the ancients perhaps more than two thousand