THE SHARK'S TEETH 



appetite and hunt down their prey with unrelenting 

 vigour. Both have the same terrifying armament of 

 strong pointed teeth, the instruments and weapons which 

 assure their dominance. Both have the same agility, 

 the same vigour, the same behaviour as regards their 

 victim; they kill to eat, to live, and in them unceasing 

 slaughter becomes a sort of vital duty. In this respect 

 the shark has an advantage over the tiger. It is more 

 powerfully built; it is keener after its prey; and it 

 has all the mysterious possibilities of its home in the 

 depths of the sea. 



Paleontologists tell us that sharks were among the 

 first vertebrates to live on the surface of the globe. 

 They came before almost all the rest. Fossilized 

 traces of them, teeth from their mouths, spines from 

 their skin, are found in rocks of the Palaeozoic era. 

 In them and for them the tooth makes its appearance 

 among organs, and is adopted, as it were, by Nature. 

 Nothing of the sort is found in creatures existing 

 before them. The results of research in comparative 

 anatomy and embryology confirm those of the palaeon- 

 tologists. To observe such a course of events and 

 such a result in the creative progression of living 

 beings is more than interesting. Nature, by such acts 

 as this, seems immoral and barbarous. Why, with 

 what aim in view, in what regard, has Nature pro- 

 duced at one fell swoop, of her own volition as it were, 

 such instruments for bloodshed, such engines of carnage 

 and destruction? Why, when producing life, did she 

 create these mighty instruments of death? By what 

 necessity was she driven to such a course? The mind 

 hesitates and stands still before painful contradictions 

 of such a sort, seeming, as they do, so inopportune 

 and wrought with suffering. It does not know what 

 to think, or at what conclusion to arrive. Is Nature, 

 which seems so well disposed to all creatures, really 

 the contrary; beneath the peaceful, restful mask she 

 shows us, does she hide a very different countenance ? 

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