the shore. Piroetes, having
made captive Arion, the poet, at length determined on throwing him
overboard; and it is said that he escaped in safety to the shore on the
back of a dolphin.

The poet says,--

"Kind, generous dolphins love the rocky shore,
Where broken waves with fruitless anger roar.
But though to sounding shores they curious come,
Yet dolphins count the boundless sea their home.
Nay, should these favorites forsake the main,
Neptune would grieve his melancholy reign.
The calmest, stillest seas, when left by them,
Would awful frown, and all unjoyous seem.
But when the darling frisks his wanton play,
The waters smile, and every wave looks gay."

THE GRAMPUS.

This inhabitant of the deep is from twenty to twenty-five feet in
length, and seems to cherish a mortal spite against the whale. It
possesses the strong affection for its young common to this order. One
of the poems of Waller is founded upon the following incident: A
grampus in England, with her cub, once got into an arm of the sea,
where, by the desertion of the tide, they were enclosed on every side.
The men on shore saw their situation, and ran down upon them with such
weapons as they could at the moment collect. The poor animals were soon
wounded in several places, so that all the immediately surrounding
water was stained with their blood. They made many efforts to escape;
and the old one, by superior strength, forced itself over the shallow,
into a deep of the ocean. But though in safety herself, she would not
leave her young one in the hands of assassins. She therefore again
rushed in, and seemed resolved, since she could not prevent, at least
to share, the fate of her offspring: the tide coming in, however,
conveyed them both off in triumph.

THE PORPOISE.

This creature is familiar to every one who has been at sea, or who has
frequented the bays and harbors along our coast. It may often be seen
in troops gambolling in the water, and seeming like a drove of black
hogs, with their backs above the waves. It is imagined by the sailors
that they are the most sportive just before a storm. The following
method is adopted for taking them on the banks of the St. Lawrence:
When the fishing season arrives, the people collect together a great
number of sallow twigs, or slender branches of other trees, and stick
them pretty firmly into the sand-banks of the river, which at low water
are left dry; this is