SHARKS AND RAY-FISHES. O 



lost sight of; and indeed they are in many respects scarcely 

 less insisted on by naturalists of our own day, although iin- 

 consciously, than they were by writers of an older date; who 

 were disposed to make them exclusively the foundation of their 

 arrangements. 



There is no reason why the lion should occupy the elevated 

 place he does in jjopular estimation as the king of beasts, except 

 with reference to his power over the weaker inhabitants of the 

 wilderness. It is his united strength and courage which establish 

 his rank in the estimation of writers whose labours have been 

 directed to the history of the habits of the animal creation. We 

 grant indeed, that in the opinion of the moralist and philosopher, 

 the possession of mere strength and commanding-:— j)erhaps fero- 

 cious, powers and dispositions, should not be estimated as the 

 sufficient mark to which the supreme rank ought to be assigned. 

 But the human mind has shewn a disposition to regard these 

 qualities as such a mark; and as a beginning even in this kind 

 of superiority must be somewhere, and the consent of ages has 

 ascribed it among beasts to the lion, and with the same conviction 

 or feeling, among birds to the eagle; we are only proceeding in 

 the same direction when we view the Sharks as holding the same 

 relative rank among the families of the ocean. They live by the 

 exertion of similar powers with those of their analogies of the 

 land and air, and even in general with more insatiable appetites 

 and energies. 



But there are other circumstances involved in the structure of 

 this class of fishes which are worthy of our notice, as tending 

 to shew the station they hold among their fellow natives of the 

 deep. 



The skin of Sharks bears a nearer resemblance in toughness 

 and strength to the covering of the higher order of animals, than 

 to the other classes of fishes, and even than does that of their 

 kindred chondropterygians or plagiostomes — the Rays; the latter 

 of which orders has this covering for the most part soft and 

 moist, although in several of the genera it is studded with 

 tubercles ; but instead of scales the skin is closely covered and 

 defended with spines, which in substance bear a not very distant 

 likeness to horn, and are even more firm and compact. Beneath 

 the skin is a layer of fibres which have the strength and ap- 

 pearance of tendons, which cross each other in opposite directions 



