248 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF 



pointed anteriorly, although not very sharp, and the nostrils 

 are placed below. 



This fish has not the least perfect bone, but appears to 

 belong 1 to the Chondroptertjgii, or cartilaginous fishes, inas- 

 much as the whole skeleton (with the exception of the teeth, 

 which are bone covered with enamel) is composed of that 

 substance. In Norway and Iceland, the flesh is cut into 

 long slices, and dried in the air for food. It generally brings 

 forth four young ones at a time. When hoisted upon deck, 

 it beats so violently with its tail, that it is dangerous to be 

 near it, and the seamen generally dispatch it, without much 

 loss of time. The pieces that are cut off exhibit a con- 

 traction of their muscular fibres for some time after life is 

 extinct. It is, therefore, extremely difficult to kill, and 

 unsafe to trust the hand within its mouth, even when the 

 head is cut off. And, if we are to believe Crantz, this mo- 

 tion is to be observed three days after, if the part is trod on 

 or struck. 



When angling is employed for its capture, this author re- 

 commends an iron chain to be employed in lieu of a line, 

 which it would either bite through or break. The Green- 

 landers strike it with a harpoon. It is said that this shark 

 is very greedy of human flesh, and follows the ships in 

 hopes of meeting with a corpse, and that it would sever the 

 arm or leg of a seaman when in the water ;* but Captain 

 Scoresby observes that although the whalers frequently 

 slip into the water where sharks abound there has never 

 been, to his knowledge, an instance wherein they have been 

 attacked by this animal. t This animal is apparently so in- 

 sensible to pain that although it has been run through the 

 body with a knife, and has escaped, yet after a while it has 

 been seen to return to banquet again upon the whale, at the 

 very spot where it received its wounds. 



* Crantz, Greenland, vol. i., p. 105. 



t Scoresby's Arctic Regions, vol. i., p. 540. 



