ABOUT SHARKS. 35 i 



known that a bucket or two of bilge-water has been known to drive 

 them off. 



The shark tribe are remarkably retentive of life, and instances are 

 related which would be almost beyond belief, if not vouched for by 

 numbers of witnesses. For instance, an individual was caught with a 

 line ; its liver was cut out, and the bowels left hanging from the body, 

 in which state the sailors, as an object of abhorrence, threw it into the 

 sea. But it continued near the boat ; and not long afterward it pur- 

 sued and attempted to devour a mackerel that had escaped from the 

 net. In another instance, a shark was thrown overboard after the 

 head had been severed from the body ; after which, for a couple of 

 hours, the body continued to use the efforts of swimming in various 

 directions to employ the conjecture of a boy among the crew as it 

 it were looking for its head. Next, we have the thrasher, which has 

 obtained the name of fox-shark, because of the shape of its tail. The 

 title of thrasher, however, is most appropriate, from its habit of lash- 

 ing the sea with its tail, by which it has been known to put to flight a 

 herd of sportive dolphins, and even to fill the whale with terror. The 

 porbeagle is another of the shark tribe, and is a common visitor on 

 the western coasts in summer. Then follows that too plentiful and 

 rapacious fish, the toper, known likewise as the white-hound, penny- 

 dog, or miller-dog. However, as it swims deep, it does not do so 

 much injury to the fishermen's nets as some of its congeners. Then 

 we have the smooth-hound, or ray-mouthed dog, or skate-toothed 

 shark, which are presumed to come from considerable distances^ from 

 the kind of hooks sometimes found in them, which resemble those used 

 on the coast of Spain. They feed upon crustaceous animals, but will 

 take a bait. The picked-dog, spur-dog, or bone-dog, but commonly 

 known as the dog-fish, is the smallest, but unquestionably the most 

 numerous of the shark tribe. It frequents our coasts all the year 

 round, and even in the severest weather. Then there are the spinous 

 shark, and Greenland shark, which will not be driven away from feed- 

 ing upon the blubber of a stranded, half-immersed whale, although 

 pierced with spears, but come again to the oleaginous banquet while 

 a spark of life exists. The basking-shark also, occasionally, casts up 

 on our coasts. It is of a large size, is capable of breaking a six-inch 

 hawser, and is only taken with considerable difficulty. Then we have 

 the rashleigh shark, the broad-headed gazer, and the hammer-head or 

 balance-fish, which may be said to complete the list of these occasional 

 unwelcome visitors to our shores. 



And now that we have said so much that is prejudicial to the 

 Squalidce or shark community, let us see what we have as a set-off in 

 their favor. As a food for man, the toper is found exposed for sale 

 in the markets at Rome ; and in Paris, that city of gastronomy, the 

 small kinds of shark, when divested of their tantalizing titles, are to 

 be detected as entries in the menu of many of the most distinguished 



