I have always been puzzled to imagine how the ‘nine-and-twenty knights of fame,’ described in the ‘Lay of the Last Minstrel,’ managed to ‘drink the red wine through the helmet barr’d.’ But in nature we meet with animals which seem almost as inconveniently armed as those chosen knights, who
. . . quitted not their armour bright,
Neither by day nor yet by night.

Amongst such animals the sword-fish must be recognised as one of the most uncomfortably-armed creatures in existence. The shark has to turn on his back before he can eat, and the attitude scarcely seems suggestive of a comfortable meal. But the sword-fish can hardly even by that arrangement get his awkwardly projecting snout out of the way. Yet doubtless this feature, which seems so inconvenient, is of great value to Xiphias. In some way as yet unknown it enables him to get his living. Whether he first kills some one of his neighbours with this instrument, and then eats him at his leisure, or whether he plunges it deep into257 the larger sort of fish, and attaching himself to them in this way, sucks nutriment from them while they are yet alive, is not known to naturalists. Certainly, he is fond of attacking whales, but this may result not so much from gastronomic tastes as from a natural antipathy—envy, perhaps, at their superior bulk. Unfortunately for himself, Xiphias, though cold-blooded, seems a somewhat warm-tempered animal; and, when he is angered, he makes a bull-like rush upon his foe, without always examining with due care whether he is likely to take anything by his motion. And when he happens to select for attack a stalwart ship, and to plunge his horny beak through thirteen or fourteen inches of planking, with perhaps a stout copper sheathing outside it, he is apt to find some little difficulty in retreating. The affair usually ends by his leaving his sword embedded in the side of the ship. In fact, no instance has ever been recorded of a sword-fish recovering his weapon (if I may use the expression) after making a lunge of this sort. Last Wednesday the Court of Common Pleas—rather a strange place, by-the-bye, for inquiring into the natural history of fishes—was engaged for several hours in trying to determine under what ............