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The fact is, boys, that sword-fish only began the job; he's come back again with a gang of ship-carpenters, saw-fish, and file-fish, and what not; and the whole posse of 'em are now hard at work cutting and slashing at the bottom; making improvements, I suppose. If old Rad were here now, I'd tell him to jump overboard and scatter 'em. They're playing the devil with his estate, I can tell him.
Of course, if a diver is picked off by a shark, the conjurer asserts that he has not properly obeyed his directions, and thus does not lose his credit. The saw-fish is another of the diver's foes, more dangerous, because more difficult to attack than the shark.
It is certainly better not to bathe in the mornings, when the air is colder than the water for then, on returning to the cooler air, one is apt to get a chill and fever. In the mouth of the river, many saw-fish are found. Rowe saw one while bathing caught it by the tail, and shoved it, "snout on," ashore. The saw is from a foot to eighteen inches long.
There were no threshers there to thresh their poor old backs, or sword-fish to stab their stomachs, or saw-fish to rip them up, or ice-sharks to bite lumps out of their sides, or whalers to harpoon and lance them. They were quite safe and happy there; and all they had to do was to wait quietly in Peacepool, till Mother Carey sent for them to make them out of old beasts into new.
In the rivers of Northern Queensland the saw-fish attain an enormous size, and the Chinese fishermen about Cooktown and Townsville often have their nets destroyed by a saw-fish enfolding himself in them.
In like manner, the odd inflatable bag of the bladder-nosed seal, the curious fishing-rod with its worm-like appendage carried on the head of the lophius or angler, the spurs on the wings of certain birds, the weapons of the sword-fish and saw-fish, the wattles of fowls, and numberless such peculiar structures, though by no possibility explicable as due to effects of use or disuse, are explicable as resulting from natural selection operating in one or other way.
* The 'saw-fish' of the Australian tidal rivers is very distinct from the sword-fish of the deep sea. The saw-fish, to which I have before alluded as harrying the swarms of sea-salmon, also make havoc with the Jew-fish, and very often are caught on Jew-fish lines.
In the rivers of Northern Queensland the saw-fish attain an enormous size, and the Chinese fishermen about Cooktown and Townsville often have their nets destroyed by a sawfish enfolding himself in them.
"Then there is the Saw-Fish, whose long snout has teeth on both sides like a saw, and his company is not desirable either. "Fortunately for us the Sea-Wolf prefers the northern ocean, and fortunate it is for the northern fish that he is a slow swimmer, else the next census would show a decided decrease in the fish family.
Though sharks are known to be common all along the coast of the island, still in the harbor of Trincomalee they are particularly so, where the huge saw-fish also abounds, from ten to twelve feet in length, including the powerful weapon from which it derives it name.
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