ABOUT SHARKS. 349 



a third of his body is occupied by spleen and liver. The bile and 

 other digestive juices which are secreted from such an immense appa- 

 ratus, and poured coutinually into the stomach, tend to stimulate 

 appetite prodigiously and what hungry animal with good teeth was 

 ever tender-hearted ? In truth, a shark's appetite can never be 

 appeased ; for, in addition to this bilious diathesis, he is not a careful 

 masticator, but, hastily bolting his food, produces thereby not only 

 the moroseness of indigestion, but a whole host of parasites, which 

 goad as well as irritate the intestines to that degree that the poor 

 squalus is sometimes quite beside himself for the torment, and rushes, 

 like a blind Polyphemus, through the waves in search of anything to 

 cram down his maw that may allay such urgent distress. He does 

 not seek to be cruel, but is cruelly famished. " It is not I," expostu- 

 lates the man in the crowd, "that is pushing; it is others behind me." 

 The poor wretch must satisfy, not only his own ravenous appetite, 

 but the constant demand of these internal parasites, either with dead 

 or living food ; and therefore it is that, sped as from a catapult, he 

 pounces on a quarry, and sometimes gorges himself beyond what he 

 is able to contain. 



Having said thus much of the rapacious habits of the Squalidce, 

 we would have it remembered that every man's hand is against them, 

 and that no tortures are considered too severe to inflict upon them 

 when caught. If they are relentless to man and every living thing 

 around them, their insatiable appetite renders them equally destruc- 

 tive to their own species, and we of the white population of this 

 globe ought to recollect, with some show of gratitude, that they al- 

 ways prefer an African to a European ; for, although they are fond of 

 men of any color, a negro is to them as the choicest venison. Com- 

 merson tells us that one of the atrocious amusements practised on 

 board slave-ships was to suspend a dead negro from the bowsprit, in 

 order to watch the efforts of the sharks to reach him, and this they 

 would sometimes effectat a height of more than twenty feet above 

 the level of the sea. Wonderful are the tales that sailors tell of the 

 various things that have been found in a shark's stomach, and it was 

 thought that any substance that would enter its mouth was at all 

 times acceptable. The following, which details a cruel trick, as de- 

 scribed in the Glasgoio Observer, dispels this illusion : " Looking 

 over the bulwarks of the schooner," writes a correspondent to this 

 journal, " I saw one of these watchful monsters winding lazily back- 

 ward and forward like a long meteor ; sometimes rising till his nose 

 disturbed the surface, and a gushing sound like a deep breath rose 

 through the breakers ; at others, resting motionless on the water, as 

 if listening to our voices, and thirsting for our blood. As we were 

 watching the motions of this monster, Bruce (a little lively negro, 

 and my cook) suggested the possibility of destroying it. This was 

 briefly to heat a fire-brick in the stove, wrap it up hastily in some old 



