The Birmingham age-herald., 1904-05-01
HUNTING OCEAN VAMPIRES.
Monster Sometimes Reverses Role and
 Becomes a Hunter.

From the Sunday Magazine.
 With the possible exception of the basking shark, the Sea Devil' or "Ocean Vampire Is the largest of all the monsters of the deep. An unborn ocean vampire taken frome the mother, pre- served at the British Museum, is five feet broad and before mounting weighed twenty pounds. The mother measured some fifteen feet in length and quite as much in breadth.
 It is at all times a dangerous under taking to attempt to capture one of these monsters, but particularly so in the case of a mother accompanied by her off, spring. She Is quite capable of reversing the role of hunter and hunted, attacking and capsizing the boat containing her would-be captors, and of seeing that none of them escape alive.
 s'Imagine," writes the Hon. William FL liot, in describing the exciting sport he from sixteen to twenty feet across the back full three feet in depth, possessed of powerful yet flexible flaps or wings with which he drives himself furiously in the water or vaults high in the air through which he skins like some enor nous bird; his feelers (commonly called norns) projecting several feet beyond his mouth, and padding all the small fry that constitutes his food into that cap acIous receptacle-and you will have an idea though an imperfect one, of this extraordinary fish"
 The so-called "horns" to which allu- sion is made are a singular feature in this animal. The pectoral or breast fins p1 n concave behind, stop short at the head to reappear as frontal appendages pro- jected on each side of the head These appendages take the form and character of limbs, being flexible and capable of grasping prey and carrying it to the mouth. The 'feelers," as they are called are sometimes three feet or more in length and are curiously articulated at The ends so as to resemble the fingers of he human hand when clenched
 In this way fishing boats and vessels of much larger size have been dragged from their moorngs, and in some cases capsized by the ocean vampires having laid hold of the anchor. An instance of this kind occurred in the harbor of Charleston. A schooner lying al anchor suddenly and seemingly of it's own voli- ton, to the engagement and alarm of those on board, started at furious rate across the harbor. Upon nearing the opposite shore it's course changed so abruptly as almost to capsize the vessel md 1t recrossed the harbor to it's former moorings.
 These mysterious flights across the har- Dor were repeated a number of times in the presence of hundreds of astonished spectators, who were utterly at a loss to account for the phenomenon. The mi grafton ceased as suddenly as they begun. Not till then did the back and undulating hukes of an immense ocean vampire ap- bearing above the water of the harbor, disclose the motive power that caused it all.
 One of the curious habits of the fish Is to throw somersaults, sometimes at considerable distance beneath the sur- face. sometimes at the surface, and some- times in the air above the surface. The reason for this particular practice, which Is kept up for hours, has. so far as the writer knows, never been conjecttured. At times the great fish will throw him. self bodily perhaps as much as ten or twelve feet in the air. A young man student of Columbia University. writ ing from Port of Spain. describes the flight of one of these enormous sea mons ters, which passed completely over him and the light boat he was rowing.