I myself have seen a sword fish of over 300 lbs. killed on a rod off Santa Catalina. When in 1909 out for Tarpon in Kingston Harbour, Jamaica, I had the good luck to secure after a fight of two and a half hours, and after being towed almost down to Port Royal and back, a distance of some five miles, a shark weighing 116 lbs., with a rod only 8 foot long, with a light salmon line, with a No. 4 hook, and with a bit of piano wire, _faute de mieux_, attached to prevent erosion.[586] From the time of the earliest authors the identification of the _Silurus_ has been a vexed question. Aristotle writing of the _Glanis_, a large fresh-water fish (his only account of actual fishing, it may be remembered, is a fight with a _Glanis_),[587] attributes to it characteristics and habits, which Pliny _totidem sententiis_, if not _verbis_, transfers to the _Silurus_, although he thrice mentions the _Glanis_. Ælian, in addition to XIV. 25, declares in XII. 14, that the _Glanis_ a species of, and very like, the _Silurus_, while Athenæus treats them as separate fish. As late as the time of Scaliger, the problem gave rise to discussion which led to no elucidation of what fish exactly corresponds to the classical _Silurus_. Perhaps the sentence of Albertus Magnus,[588] “a river fish which was called by the Greeks _Glanis_, but by us _Silurus_,” seemed, although only a conjectural compromise, as near as we could get to the identity. Agassiz, however, reluctant to accept Cuvier’s identification of the _Glanis_ with the _Silurus glanis_, came to the conclusion (after examining six specimens of a Siluroid new to Ichthyologists, which he obtained from the Acheloüs in Western Greece) that from agreement in the form of the anal fin, the position of the gall bladder, the connected spawn, etc., they were the same as Aristotle’s _Glanis_. To this Siluroid Agassiz gave the name _Glanis aristotelis_: it is, perhaps, better known as _Parasilurus aristotelis_.[589] If the _Silurus_ be the _Scheid_ of Germany, his strength, habits, and ferocity, as set forth in our authors are indeed very credible. From Aristotle we learn that this “river fish” is easy to hook (as we should suspect from its rapacity, which has been tersely summarised in “pisces pisci præda at huic omnes”), but from its huge powers and hard teeth very hard to hold. The passage in Pliny, IX. 75, which he extracts from Aristotle[590]—“Silurus mas solus omnium edita custodit ova, sæpe et quinquagenis diebus, ne absumantur ab aliis”—has by a wrong rendering accorded to the male _Silurus_ the proud distinction of being the only male fish that guards its eggs. This is absurd, for other instances, _e.g. Chromis simonis_, exist.