ABSTRACT
AS the skin, or rather the leather, from this animal is black and exceedingly tough, it fetches a high price and is reserved for certain uses: hoisting very large items over pulleys, or tying very heavy objects together, especially the bells in high towers. Indeed, because of the strength of this hide it is assigned for fastening the weightiest bells to the wooden beams within which they are swung, and for lashing together engines of war. 1 There is another sea-beast in Arcadia, according to Pliny in Bk IX, Ch. 19, called the adonis or exocoetus, from the fact that it climbs out on to dry land in order to sleep. 2 3 It makes its way on to the land when the sea is calm and sleeps deeply, stretched out among the rocks. It has a huge terror of waterfowl. Like the whale and the seal, it sleeps on the sands, plunged into a profound slumber by the sun’s powerful warmth. 3
