Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-ndw9j Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-13T02:27:49.536Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Nature Note: Dolphin-Riders: Ancient Stories Vindicated

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 January 2009

T. F. Higham
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

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

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

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