Los Angeles herald., 1907-04-07

straight out of his upper jaw. Sometimes,
but very rarely, the horns remain apart, anu
do not twist. Generally one of the horns
thlns m out little distance from the mo mouef of tho
This tusk is of the purest ivory. One Oh Lne
royal treasures of Denmark is the marWhai
throne of the castle of Rosenberg:
What the unicorn does with his horn rs not
very clear. Some travellers tell us that ne
uses it as a fork to skewer up the, hat-hsn
from the bottom of the sea; never, however,
does he seem to have been caught in the act.
Others relate how it is used as glmlet tor
boring blow-holes in the ice, but this state
ment is not made from personal observation;
Others describe it as a weapon OF offense ana
Defense confined to the males, and used
much as the sword was in the duels OF the
past by rival combatants, and aver that UNI
corns are occasionally seen engaged IN TREND
ly fencing matches-which may or may not De
true.
Its end is always worn and polished, so that
the tooth must be in constant use; and an
other thing about it is certain, and that Is
that several ships, on being dry-docked, have
been found pierced, and had the broken norm
taken out of their timbers.
As among both the cetaceans and the hshes
we have dolphins so have we unlcorns, and
the swordfsh gives us another ODD SUBJECT,
whose upper jaw has been left IN the tlmbers
of many ship.
In the Dreadnought trial in 1S64-an action
brought against underwriters for damages said
to have been caused by a swordhsh-many
instances of this were given in evidence by
Professor Owen and the late Mr.. Frank Buck
land.
1t appeared that a swordfsh had been
caught by the crew and had broken away
again, and that the same evening the ship
sprung leak, which leak the owners asserted
was caused by a revengeful thrust from the
angry fish.
Against this the scientific witnesses deposed
that though swordfsh frequently pierces.
ships hull, he never gets his blade out again.
The roughness of the underside OF his jaw for
bids its extraction. He has to break it off
and leave it behind him, to die probably In
the attempt
Professor Owen cited one instance in which
the fish completely perforated the vessels
side, and poked his nose into, passengers
berth: An even more remarkable case is
recorded of the driving power of the sword
fish.
The English ship Leopard was once pierced
by fish through an inch of sheathing, three
inches of plank and four and half inches of
solid timber-eight and half inches of the
sword being thus embedded.
A record capped by the Hon. Josiah Rob
bins, who relates that the ship Fortune was
struck by swordfsh, which drove. right
through the copper, through an inch Of board
twelve inches of white oak, two and a half
inches of hard oak ceiling plank, and, lastly,
through the head of an oil-cask where it re-
mained immovaby fixed without spilling the
and consequently Of the mackerel group, to
which he belongs He has not many near re-
latjons, but one of them is the singular fan
fish, or sailor-fsh, of Ceylon, which hoists its
fin like a leg-of-mutton mainsail, and beats
to windward on the surface of the sea.
He is one of the oldest of the food fishes,
and his capture in the Mediterranean is en-
gagged in today in much the same manner as
was described by Strabo centuries ago. It is
whale fishing in miniature and on the Ameri-
can coast the pursuit of the swordfsh has be-
come a regular trade.