Because of his shi "sword" the swordfish is supposed to be a fighter. There are tales enough of swordfish that have rammed ships and ts. Dr. E. W. Gudger of the American Museum of Natural History, confirms them, but acquit pcc lur its th in a as Vessels," and which is GE literature on the swordfish but has gone far beyond all other writers in examining the technical possibilities of the dreaded "sword. In fact, half of his monograph is composed of entirely new material. In times, the swordfish acquired a bad name for ferocity. His reputation is as black as ever after 2000 years. According to Dr. Gudger the swordfish is really timid and temperamental.
There are two explanations for attacks on vessels in transit. In the daytime many small fishes collect under a vessel for shade and shelter. Xiphias (scientific name for the swordfish) may miscalculate in charging these and drive his sword into the vessels hull. At night, when many rammings occur because of a phosphorescing swimming school of fishes, he may make the same mistake. Or, if he lies asleep at the surface of the water and is awakened by the rippling around the cutwater of any advancing vessel, a sound which is to him like the noise of a school of fish. he may charge with dire results to himself. When harpooned from the pulpit of a sworder the fish feels the pain at his "ud of the line. -He is pulled toward the vessel, of which he is ordinarily not afraid. To ease the ache he dashes toward the source of the pull. Frighten-
ead on.
and pained he frequently meets the schooner Ordinarily, when the fish is harpooned, the keg or float attached to the inner end of the harpoon line, is thrown overboard. When the fish has tired himself out, one or two men are sent out in a dory to retrieve the keg and to lance him in a gill. To ease his pain he fol. lows the warp back to the dory. When he gets close to the dory, which alarms him, he may associate it with the pain and drive his sword into it. This is particularly likely to happen to a schooner or dory if he is struck in the head or just back of it. His nervous system disorganized. he- goes "wild" and charges the first thing in sight.
Dr. Gudger shows that the broadbill swordfish, the marlin and the sailfish (both round-billed spearfishes) are built for speed. Their swords and spears turn out to be not fighting weapons but food-getting tools. The swordfish and others like him lash back and forth in a school of small fish and sometimes impale the larger on: s. The broadbill does not attack the whale, as even fishermen long believed, but it does attack other sword and speamishes and the sharks. Furthermore, is sometimes dives down and buries its sword in the mud of the sea bottom, a trick first noted by Conrad G: sner in 1558.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.