BASKING SHARK. 519 



winter. When northerly winds prevail, it is most frequent 

 on the west coast of Scotland. It has also been seen on the 

 north and on the west coasts of Ireland. If westerly winds 

 prevail, it is not unusual to see them along the whole line of 

 the southern coast. It has been taken on the coasts of 

 Waterford, Wales, Cornwall, Devonshire, Dorsetshire, and 

 several times at different places on the coast of Sussex. 

 The specimen described and figured by Sir E. Home, in the 

 Philosophical Transactions for 1809, was taken off Hastings ; 

 and the largest specimen I have seen, which measured thirty- 

 six feet in length, was caught some years since off Brighton. 

 From our southern coast it frequently wanders as far to the 

 eastward and south as the coast of France ; and the fish de- 

 scribed and figured by M. de Blainville in the eighteenth 

 volume of the Annales du Museum, I have very little doubt 

 was of the same species as that described by Sir E. Home, 

 which has been already referred to. 



The difficulty of obtaining a perfect view of this unwieldy 

 fish, either when floating in water, or when from its great 

 weight it lies partly imbedded in the soft soil of the sea- 

 shore, has led to the differences which appear in the repre- 

 sentations of it which have been published by different na- 

 turalists. 



The Basking Shark is said to exhibit but little of the 

 ferocious character of the Sharks in general, and is so indif- 

 ferent to the approach of a boat as to suffer it even to touch 

 its body when listlessly sunning itself at the surface. From 

 its habit of swimming slowly along with its dorsal fin, and 

 sometimes part of its back, out of water, it has obtained in 

 the North the name of Sail-fish. In Orkney it is called 

 Hoe-mother, and by contraction Homer, that is, the mo- 

 ther of the Picked Dog-fish, which is there called the Hoe. 

 If deeply struck with a harpoon, the Basking Shark plunges 

 suddenly down, and swims away with such rapidity and vio- 



