g close together. Captain Ashby says that they are always distant
from each other at least thirty or forty feet.

The pugnacity of the swordfish has become a byword. Without any special
effort on my part, numerous instances of their attacks upon vessels have
in the last ten years found their way into the pigeonhole labeled
"Swordfish."

AElian says (b. XXXII, c. 6) that the swordfish has a sharp-pointed snout
with which it is able to pierce the sides of a ship and send it to the
bottom, instances of which have been known near a place in Mauritania
known as Cotte, not far from the river Sixus, on the African side of the
Mediterranean. He describes the sword as like the beak of the ship
known as the trireme, which was rowed with three banks of oars.

The _London Daily News_ of December 11, 1868, contained the following
paragraph, which emanated, I suspect, from the pen of Prof. R. A.
Proctor.

Last Wednesday the court of common pleas--rather a strange place,
by the by, for inquiring into the natural history of fishes--was
engaged for several hours in trying to determine under what
circumstances a swordfish might be able to escape scot-free after
thrusting his snout into the side of a ship. The gallant ship
_Dreadnought_, thoroughly repaired and classed A1 at Lloyd's, had
been insured for L3,000 against all risks of the sea. She sailed on
March 10, 1864, from Columbo for London. Three days later the crew,
while fishing, hooked a swordfish. Xiphias, however, broke the
line, and a few moments after leaped half out of the water, with
the object, it should seem, of taking a look at his persecutor, the
_Dreadnaught_. Probably he satisfied himself that the enemy was
some abnormally large cetacean, which it was his natural duty to
attack forthwith. Be this as it may, the attack was made, and the
next morning the captain was awakened with the unwelcome
intelligence that the ship had sprung a leak. She was taken back to
Columbo, and thence to Cochin, where she hove down. Near the keel
was found a round hole, an inch in diameter, running completely
through the copper sheathing and planking.

As attacks by swordfish are included among sea risks, the insurance
company was willing to pay the damages claimed by the owners of the
ship, if only it could be proved that the hole had been really made
by aswordfish. No insta