Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume VI.djvu/63

 DEVIL FISH 55 oe

was conceived as a spirit who had once been good and had fallen. During the middle ages he was represented as having a black com- plexion, flaming eyes, sulphurous odor, horns, tail, hooked nails, and cloven hoofs. Such names as Devil's Dam, Devil's Bridge, &c., at- test the belief in his actual interposition in human affairs. The devil, as the ideal of evil, vice, craft, cunning, and knavery, has played a prominent part in literature. The following are examples : Fabricius, Der heilige, Uuge und gelehrte Teufel (Esslingen, 1567); Musaus, Der melancholische Teufel (Tham, 1572) ; Velez de Guevara, El diabolo coxuelo (Barcelona, 1646); Damerval, Le livre de la diablerie (Paris, 1508) ; Le diable bossu, Le diable femme, Le diable pendu et dependu, Le diable d*argent, Le diable babillard (all early in the 18th century) ; Le diable confondu (the Hague, 1740) ; Le diable hermite (Amsterdam, 1741) ; Le Sage, Le diable boiteux (Paris, 1755); Fre"d6ric Soulie", Memoires du diable (Paris, 1842) ; " The Parlyament of Deuylles," printed by Wynkin de Worde (1509) ; " The Devill of Mascon" (Oxford, 1658); Defoe, "The Political History of the Devil, as well Ancient as Modern" (London, 1726) ; and Beard's " Autobiography of the Devil " (Lon- don, 1872). (See DEMONOLOGY.) DEVIL FISH, a cartilaginous fish of the ray family, and the genus ceplialoptera (Dume>il). In this genus the head is truncated in front, and provided on each side with a pointed, wing-like process, separate from the pectoral fins, and capable of independent motion ; these processes, however, seem sometimes to be pro- longations of the pectorals, and give the name to the genus, which signifies wings upon the head. The pectorals are of great breadth, triangular, resembling wings, and making the averse diameter of the fish greater than the itudinal, with the tail included ; the jaws at the end of the head, the lower the more advanced ; the eyes are prominent and lateral ; the tail is armed with one or two serrated spines, and is long and slender ; in front of the spine is a small dorsal fin with 36 rays; the th are small, numerous, flat, and arranged many rows ; the small nostrils are placed the angles of the mouth, and openings robably the auditory) are situated on the orsal aspect of the appendages to the head, behind the eyes ; the branchial openings are "ve on each side, large, linear, near each other, fifth being the smallest ; the ventral fins ,re small, rounded, near the base of the tail ; the skin is rough to the touch, like that of some sharks ; the skeleton is cartilaginous. The old genus cephaloptera has been divided by Mtiller and Henle, and the genus ceratoptera added. In the first the mouth is on the ventral aspect, and the pectorals are prolonged forward to a point beyond the head, resembling horns; four species are described. In the second the mouth is at the end of the snout, the upper jaw is crescentic, and the under convex ; there are no teeth in the upper jaw, and they are small and scale-like on the under ; the pecto- rals are separated from the precephalic fins by a rayless space; this includes three species, and among them, probably, the one mentioned below as caught at Kingston, Jamaica. The devil fish mentioned by Catesby, in his " Natu- ral History of Carolina," is probably the same as the gigantic ray described by Mitchill in vol. i. of the " Annals of the Lyceum of Nat- ural History of New York," under the name of the "vampire of the ocean" (0. vampyrus, Mitch.). This specimen was taken in the At- lantic, near the entrance of Delaware bay, in 1823, and was so heavy as to require three pair of oxen, a horse, and several men to drag it on shore; it weighed about five tons, and was 17 ft. long and 18 ft. wide; the skin on the back was blackish brown, and on the belly black and white, and very slimy; the mouth was 2f ft. wide, the greatest breadth of the skull 5 ft., and the distance between the eyes 4| ft. ; the cranial appendages were 2 ft. long and a foot wide, tapering, supported internally Devil Fish (Cephaloptera vampyms). by 27 parallel cartilaginous articulated rays, allowing free motion in almost all directions, and probably used as prehensile organs ; the immense pectorals were attached to the scapular arch, and contained 77 articulated parallel car- tilaginous rays, and were used like wings to fly through the water. The specific name of this ray was given by Mitchill from its size, repre- senting in its family what the vampire does in the bat family. This specimen was again de- scribed by Lesueur in the " Journal of the Acad- emy of Natural Sciences " (vol. iv., 1824), as C. giorna (Lac6p.). Cuvier and De Kay con- sider the latter a distinct species, rarely exceed- ing the weight of 50 Ibs. The devil fish is oc- casionally seen on the coast of the southern states in summer and autumn, and wonderful stories are told of its strength and ferocity, its extraordinary shape and size having trans- formed a powerful but inoffensive animal into a terrible monster. Other species are met with in the tropical parts of the Atlantic and Pa- cine, both in mid ocean and on sandy coasts, which they approach to bring forth their young. They are not uncommon in the West Indies, and Dr. Bancroft, in vol. iv. of the "Zoologi-