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Nature Note: Dolphin-Riders: Ancient Stories Vindicated

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 January 2009

T. F. Higham
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Extract

In the Classical Review of March 1957 a request was made that some New Zealand scholar would confirm and amplify for future editors of Pliny, H.N. ix. 24 ff., and Pliny, Ep. ix. 33, a brief report printed in The Times of 10 March 1956 about a dolphin ‘which allowed children at the Opononi beach to ride on its back … frolicked among the bathers in the shallow water and balanced balls on its nose’. I record most gratefully the substance of two replies to this request, one from Mr. L. G. Pocock, formerly (1928–55) Professor of Classics in Canterbury University College; and the other from Professor H. A. Murray, M.A., F.R.N.S., N.Z., of the Victoria University of Wellington. I am further indebted to Mr. Pocock for obtaining the photographs reproduced in this number of Greece & Rome (Plate V). They were taken by Mr. Eric Lee-Johnson, (Box 5, Waimamaku, Hokianga, N.Z.), who has most generously waived reproduction fees, on condition that none of the prints is handed on for reproduction elsewhere.

Type
Research Article
Information
Greece & Rome , Volume 7 , Issue 1 , March 1960 , pp. 82 - 86
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1960

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References

page 82 note 1 Classical Review, N.S. vii (1957), 17.Google Scholar

page 82 note 2 See further an article on ‘Opo of the Hokianga’ in The Times of 4 09 1959Google Scholar, and a letter relating to it in the issue of 14 September, p. 19.

page 84 note 1 ‘Pelorus Jack’ is misnamed ‘Pelorus-Jack’ and mentioned with some scepticism in Allen, G. B.'s Selected Letters of Pliny (Oxford, 1915), p. 140Google Scholar. It was once classed as a Whale, Goose-Beak (Ziphius Cavirostris)Google Scholar; later as a Grampus Griseus (see Hutton, F. W. and Drummond, J., The Animals of New Zealand (4th ed., Christchurch, 1923), 17)Google Scholar; and later still as a Gramphidelphis Griseus by Remington Kellogg, Director of the U.S. National Museum. Mr. Kellogg writes: ‘It became so well known from its habit of playing about the bows of passing vessels at the entrance to Pelorus Sound … that it was given protection for its natural life by Order in Council.’ It ‘accompanied vessels for about 32 years, and was last seen in 1912’; some say later (National Geographic Magazine, 01 1940, 85Google Scholar; see also ibid., coloured plate No. 21, showing a Risso's Dolphin). I have been unable to consult The Story of Pelorus Jack, by Cowan, J. (Christchurch, 1911; 2nd ed., 1930).Google Scholar