CLEVER FISHES. 



537 



present us with steam shears with blades ten feet long, and intended 

 to receive cavalry who knows ? There is no telling where the inge- 

 nuity of modern inventors in the destructive line may lead us. But 

 there are not many instruments so efficient for their purpose as the 

 tooth of a shark. It is difficult to handle one freelv without cut- 

 ting one's fingers ; and when we consider the tremendous leverage of 

 a shark's jaws employed against each other like scissors, armed with 

 rows of lancets, it is evident that nothing in the shape of flesh, gristle, 

 or bone, could withstand them. Their capacity, too, is equal to their 

 powers, for a pair of jaws taken from a shark of not more than nine 

 feet long has been known to be passed down over the shoulders and body 

 of a man six feet high without inconvenience. It was thought to be 

 an act of very unusual strength and dexterity on the part of the Em- 

 peror Commodus to cut a man in two at one blow, but the jaws of the 

 white shark find no difficulty whatever in executing that feat. The 

 vast number of teeth contained within the shark's jaw has been ac- 

 counted for by some writers on the hypothesis that they are erected 

 when the shark seizes its prey, at all other times lying fiat on their 

 sides. It is now, however, more generally admitted that the shark 

 only employs the outer row of teeth, and that the inner ones are a pro- 

 vision of Nature against an accident which is, and must be, a very com- 

 mon one when the implements are considered, and the force with which 

 they are employed viz., the breaking of a tooth. In this case the 

 corresponding tooth on the inside becomes erect, and is by degrees 

 pushed forward into the place of the broken one a wondrous and 

 very necessary provision to keep so delicate and powerful an apparatus 

 as the shark's jaw always in order. The voracity of the shark forms 

 an endless resource for the writers on the marvellous whose bent lies 

 toward natural history. Whole ships' crews have been devoured by 

 sharks ere now, while their omnivorousness is extraordinary. This is 

 well exemplified by the observation once made to me by an old tar, 

 who was dilating on the variety of objects he had found at one time or 

 another inside the bellies of sundry sharks. " Lord love ye, sir," quo' 

 Ben, " there bain't nothin' as you mightn't expec' to find in the insides 

 o' a shirk, from a street pianny to a milestone ! " 1 



Continuing the description of the variety of weapons exemplified in 

 fishes, we have a rival of that terrible scourge the knout in the tail of 

 the Thresher, or Fox-shark {Alopias vulpes). The upper lobe is tre- 

 mendously elongated, being nearly as long as the body of the fish, and 

 amazingly muscular. It is curved like the blade of a scythe in shape, 

 and the blows which it can and does inflict with this living flail can be 



1 Witness the story of the Magpie schooner, very well told in the " Shipwreck " series 

 of the " Percy Anecdotes." This vessel was capsized in a squall, and most of the crew took 

 refuge in a boat, which was upset by overcrowding. They were surrounded by sharks 

 at the time, and every man, save two, who managed to right the boat and escape, was de- 

 voured by the sharks. 



