Footnote 3232: [(return)]
Histoire Naturelle des Poissons.
Footnote 3241: [(return)]
See note B appended to this chapter.
Footnote 3242: [(return)]
Cybium (Scomber, Linn.) guttatum.
Footnote 3243: [(return)]
These facts serve to explain the story told by the friar ODORIC of Friuli, who visited Ceylon about the year 1320 A.D., and says there are "fishes in those seas that come swimming towards the said country in such abundance that for a great distance into the sea nothing can be seen but the backs of fishes, which casting themselves on the shore, do suffer men for the space of three daies to come and to take as many of them as they please, and then they return again into the sea."—Hakluyt, vol. ii. p. 57.
Footnote 3251: [(return)]
There are other species of Sardine found at Ceylon besides the S. Neohowii; such as the S. lineolata, Cuv. and Val. and the S. leiogaster, Cuv. and Val. xx. 270, which was found by M. Reynaud at Trincomalie. It occurs also off the coast of Java. Another Ceylon fish of the same group, a Clupea, is known as the "poisonous sprat;" the bonito (Thynnus affinis, Cang.), the kangewena, or unicorn fish (Balistes?), and a number of others, are more or less in bad repute from the same imputation.
Footnote 3252: [(return)]
Two other species are found in the Ceylon waters, P. cuspidatus and P. pectinatus.
Footnote 3271: [(return)]
Raja narinari, Bl. Schn. p. 361. Aëtobates narinari, Müll. und Henle., Plagiost. p. 179.
Footnote 3281: [(return)]
ÆLIAN tells a story of a ship in the Black Sea, the bottom of which was penetrated by the sword of a Xiphias (L. xiv. c. 23); and PLINY (L. xxxii. c. 8) speaks of a similar accident on the coast of Mauritania. In the British Museum there is a specimen of a plank of oak, pierced by a sword-fish, and still retaining the broken weapon.
Footnote 3301: [(return)]
Trans. Zool. Soc. ii. p. 71. Pl. 15.
Footnote 3302: [(return)]
[Greek: Podas ge mên chêlas ê pterygia.]
—Lib. xvi. c. 18.