Naturalist.

Alexandra Herald and Central Otago Gazette, Issue 390, 29 October 1903, Page 7

Naturalist.

WHALE AND SWORDFISH. ■fjJKHE following account of a duel beJBtflg tweeh a whale and a swordfish is almost worthy of Frank Bullen. It is told by a tourist just baok from a cruise among the Windward and Leeward Islands-.—„ ~" • IWe;Were steaming solemnly along the north ashore of the island of Trinidad when there: was a cry of 'Whale ho!' The passengers hurried to the starboard bow and saw the leviathan, a big old bull, the sailors told U3, lying calmly asleep on the surface of the sea les3 than half a mile off. ' Suddenly he spouted, lashed furiously with his tail and dived out of sight. 'Directly over the spot where he disappeared a J swordfidh leaped, Its terrible weapon of hone and gristle flashing in the sun like burnished steel. The whale soon rose again some 50 yards to the.; west; agitatiag the water until it foamed.''The swordfish's movoraents through the water were as flashes of chain lightning. He seldom went so deep that we could not follow him, Onr flesh crawled as we watched the whale, lie there and take stab after stab. The water hear him was crimsoned. 'We begged the captain to shoot this member of the Mafia who ÜBed his stiletto bo vigorously, but all he would do was to order the engines to be reversed so that we might see the end of the battle. I think I could have killed the fish with my riflg, but the weapon was not with me. ' Darting 'off to a distance of from 30 to 40 yavds, the swordfish wheeled sharply about and sighted for Mb enemy. For au iastanfe it lay perfectly motionless, like a torpedo being aimed for a battleship to be deitcoyed. > ' Then wa saw a streak of yellow lightning making straight for the whale, Titere was a convulsion of the waters, the leviathan lifted up its great head, sent up a spray of blood, quivered from nose to tail, and sank.'

SOME ANIMiL ODDITIES. Nature produces Hot only human, bat beast and bird oddities in great number, many of these being such sufferers at her hands that one cannot help defining her cruelties as perfectly terrible in their machinations. Take for instance the rodent family, of which there are more than 900 distinct species k&own to scientists, and which consists of comparatively harmless little animals, like the hare, eqci«rel,,mice, &z, who live by gnawing. Their incisor or cutting teeth grow very rapidly, from tke roots, and just as fast as they wear away at the tips by gnawing wood and other hard substances. And this often causes some unhappy member of this vast family to be doomed to a death perfectly appalling in its exquisite cruelty, as these long incisors often take abnormal shapes even with' all the teeth in their heads. It is far worse when they happen to lose an upper incisor tooth from disease or accident, for the lower one, finding nothing to work "upon as the animal feeds, and meeting with no opposition, continues to grow and increase in length enormously, uatii it curves completly round the upper jaw, and slowly each day presses down upon it tighter and tighter, until at last the wretched creature, though probably surrounded,,, by good food in abundance, can no longer open its mouth, and after long days of torture, with food and water both denied to it, death at last puts an end to its sufferings.