316 CHONDROPTERYGIl. SHARK FAMILY. 



Fauna Groenlandica, where he names it erroneously 

 Squalus carcharias. It is frequently fourteen feet 

 long, and six or eight feet in girth. It feeds on 

 almost all marine animals, whether living or dead, 

 but prefers the blubber of whales (excepting that of 

 the spermaceti whale) to all other food. While 

 the men are employed in cutting the blubber from 

 a whale, they have little to fear from it, for it is 

 then so intent on obtaining its favourite food, as to 

 make no effort to obtain any other. It even at- 

 tacks the whale while alive, and, when dead, scoops 

 out (Scoresby affirms) hemispherical pieces from 

 its body, nearly as big as a person s head, gorging 

 lump after lump, until the whole cavity of its belly- 

 is filled. Insensible to pain and tenacious of life as 

 all the larger sharks are, this species has been proved 

 to be so in a still more remarkable degree. A super- 

 ficial wound seems in no degree to disturb it, and 

 even when pierced through the body with a sailor's 

 flensing knife, it does not desert the carcase till its 

 appetite is fully satisfied. When the body is cut 

 into parts, the separate portions continue to show 

 signs of vitality for some time, and it is unsafe to 

 put the hand into its mouth a good while after the 

 head has been separated from the trunk. These 

 peculiarities may be partly accounted for by the 

 singularly languid state of its circulation.^ the heart, 

 which is very small, performing only six or eight 

 pulsations in a minute, and continuing to beat for 

 some hours afier being taken out of the body. The 

 Greenlanders, who name this fish Ekallurksoak, eat 



