Delphinus Delphis.
The most famous member of this numerous family is undoubtedly the classical Dolphin of the ancients (Delphinus delphis) which attains a length of from nine to ten feet, and is, according to Pliny, the swiftest of all animals, so as to merit the appellation of the "arrow of the sea." His lively troops often accompany for days the track of a ship, and agreeably interrupt the monotony of a long sea-voyage. As if in mockery of the most rapid sailer, they shoot past so as to vanish from the eye, and then return again with the same lightning-like velocity. Their spirits are so brisk that they frequently leap into the air, as if longing to expatiate in a lighter fluid. Hence, dolphins are the favourites of the mariner and the poet, who have vied in embellishing their history with the charms of fiction.
Everybody knows the wonderful story of Arion, who having been forced by pirates to leap into the sea, proceeded merrily to his journey's end on the back of a dolphin:—
"Secure he sits, and with harmonious strains
Requites his bearer for his friendly pains.
The gods approve, the dolphin heaven adorns,
And with nine stars a constellation forms."
Pliny relates the no less astonishing tale of a boy at Baiæ, who by feeding it with bread, gained the affections of a dolphin, so that the thankful creature used to convey him every morning to school across the sea to Puteoli, and back again. When the boy died, the poor disconsolate dolphin returned every morning to the spot where he had been accustomed to meet his friend, and soon fell a victim to his grief. The same naturalist tells us also that the dolphins at Narbonne rendered themselves very useful to the fishermen by driving the fish into their nets, and were generously rewarded for their assistance with "bread soaked in wine." A king of Caria having chained a dolphin in the harbour, its afflicted associates appeared in great numbers, testifying their anxiety for its deliverance by such unequivocal signs of sorrow, that the king, touched with compassion, restored the prisoner to liberty.
Such, and similar fables, which were believed by the naturalists of antiquity, are laughed at even by the old women of our times. The dolphin is in no respects superior to the other cetaceans; his musical taste is as low as zero, and if, like the bonito and albacore, he follows a ship for days together, it is most surely not out of affection for man, but on account of the offal that is thrown overboard. But do not many human friendships repose on similar selfish motives?
The Porpoise.