SIZE AND STKUCTUKE OF THRESHER SHARK. 219 



In Land ami Water, vol. iii., p. G08, No. 76, July 6, 

 18G9, 1 record a line specimen captured by the crew of a 

 Yarmouth mackerel-boat : it was 14ft. 5in. long, 5ft. 9in. 

 in circumference, and weighed 5001bs. In October, 18G7, 

 I received a very fine thresher from Mr. Ledger ; it had 

 been caught about eight miles off Folkestone in some 

 mackerel-nets, in which he had completely wound him- 

 self like a caterpillar in his chrysalis. He was too 

 large to be taken into the boat, so the fishermen fastened 

 a rope round his tail and towed him, stern foremost, 

 into the harbour, whence he was sent up to me. 



As we came out of the railway station I stopped the 

 van at the weighing-machine, and ascertained that his 

 weight was 3f cwt. The total length of the body, with 

 tail, was 13ft. 6in., the tail alone measuring Gft. lOin. 

 With the assistance of H. Lee, Esq., C. Hambro, Esq., 

 and 'other friends, and b}^ working late at night, I 

 made a very good cast of this fish. The stomach con- 

 tained no less than twenty-seven mackerel, some freshly 

 caught, others partly digested. The liver was in two 

 lobes and very large. The stomach, I found, when 

 held out, would contain about a bucket and a half of 

 Waaler. The inner surface was covered with longitu- 

 dinal rii^fic of uniform diameter. The lower end of 

 the stomach ended in apparently a second stomach ; 

 but upon opening this a most peculiar structure was 

 visible. The small intestines, instead of being pro- 

 longed to a considerable length (as in the sheep, &c.) 

 is coiled round upon itself, as in a corkscrew. Paley, 

 in his chapter upon Mechanical Contrivances in the 

 Structure of Animals, writes of this as follows: — ^'lu 

 the fox-shark the intestine is apparently straight from 

 one end to the other ; but in this straight and con- 

 sequently short intestine is a winding, corkscrew, spiral 



