THE IMPENETRABLE SEA 



them before darting in and devouring them in enormous 

 numbers. 



Having teeth somewhat different from other sharks, 

 the five species known as hammerheads, or hammer- 

 headed sharks, form a group unique among fishes, in 

 view of the extraordinary conformation of the head. 

 Instead of retaining its usual more or less pointed form, 

 the front part of the head of these sharks is broadened 

 and expanded on each side to form a hammer-like (or 

 more accurately, mallet-like) structure. 



There is nothing in the habits of the creature that 

 accounts for its strange shape. The eyes of this shark are 

 placed at either end of the projecting extremities, and 

 are therefore abnormally wide apart, so that the ham- 

 merhead's bifocal vision must give it a remarkable im- 

 pression of all that it sees. The mouth is set centrally and 

 between the two projections, so that its corners coincide 

 with a line drawn centrally through them. 



The hammerhead produces its young alive. From the 

 interior of a very fine specimen, captured near Tenby in 

 1839, which measured more than ten feet in length, 

 thirty-nine young ones — all perfectly formed and aver- 

 aging nineteen inches in length — were taken. The flesh 

 of the hammerhead is hard, coarse and uneatable, but 

 that of some sharks is very palatable. 



All over the world — in the United States, China, India 

 and other places — ^shark fisheries have developed in recent 

 decades for the purpose of securing and marketing the 

 twenty-one products which can be obtained from the 

 bodies of sharks. For centuries the animal had been 

 regarded as a loathsome creature with disgusting habits 

 which made it a pariah and an outcast with no redeem- 

 ing features, commercial or otherwise. According to 

 travellers' accounts it was a cannibalistic brute — devour- 

 ing its own babies ; a gross and filthy feeder ; a treacherous 

 killer — Nature had certainly gone crazy in creating the 

 shark : a verminous abortion that was no use to man. But 



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