THE DESTINY OF A BLUE SHARK 



tracted a large white squid with the other half of its 

 jaw, together with two boiled potatoes. This extru- 

 sion of the stomach is not at all connected with 

 death, but is a very convenient arrangement to 

 enable the shark to get rid of such indigestible relics 

 of a meal as fish bones and squid jaws. It recalls the 

 neat little oval pellets of bones and fur which we 

 pick up beneath owls' nests. 



I gave one last tug at the jaws and one of the 

 smaller teeth cut through my finger as if it were a 

 newly-sharpened razor. 



The teeth are very beautiful, a front row of thirty 

 in each jaw, recurved triangles in the upper and 

 upright spearheads in the lower. They are of the 

 finest polished ivory and toothed all the way around 

 — half a hundred razor-edged scallops. Behind the 

 upright row is a deep depression or trench to which 

 might be given the name of the dentist's despair, for 

 it holds an infinity of reserve teeth, ready to spring 

 to place when required. Everything about the teeth 

 is ingenious. They overlap, but not like the tiles on 

 a roof, when if one was broken they would all 

 weaken, but every other one is wholly outside, and 

 the two adjoining inside. When one of the outer 

 ones breaks off or is lost, its nearest reserve in the 

 second line trench is drawn upright by strong mem- 

 branes and the line is unbroken. At the deepest end 

 of the trench, the teeth are soft and leathery and 

 still farther back they are mere creases or folds in 

 the wall. 



My anatomist and I were not nearly so familiar 



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