112 BULLETIN 10 0, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



Red Sea, Natal, Cape Colony, China, Japan, Kamchatka, Queens- 

 land, New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia, New Zealand, 

 Melanesia, Micronesia, Polynesia, Hawaii. Elsewhere in the Pacific 

 known also from California and Chile, besides being widely dis- 

 tributed in the temperate and torrid Atlantic, This is evidently the 

 largest and most formidable of all animals known to man, surely 

 of sharks or fishes. Reports or stories of its man-eating exploits are 

 legion, doubtless many of them in some measure authentic. Likely 

 the man eater is the "great fish" in the story of Jonah. Persons 

 washed or fallen overboard from vessels have been devoured or 

 swallowed entire. A large shark of this species caught near Soquel, 

 Calif., was about 30 feet long and contained in its stomach a young 

 sea lion that weighed about 100 pounds. According to the late Rus- 

 sell J. Coles, the white shark feeds largely on fishes, though with age 

 it seems to specialize on other food, often sea turtles. He expresses 

 the opinion that few white sharks ever attack man or look on him 

 as food, but having once done so, as by chance, such a shark imme- 

 diately becomes very dangerous. 



Family HALSYDRIDAE 

 The Basking Sharks 



Body massive, elongate. Caudal peduncle restricted, with keel 

 each side. Head very large. Snout produced. Eye small, without 

 nictitating membrane. Mouth large. Teeth very small, numerous, 

 conic, without cusps or serratures. Nostrils near mouth. Gill open- 

 ings very wide, extend from front of back nearly down to median 

 line of throat, all before pectorals. Spiracle small, above mouth 

 corner. Brain very small. First dorsal large, midway between pec- 

 torals and ventrals. Second dorsal and anal small. Caudal lunate, 

 upper lobe longer. Caudal with pits. Pectorals and ventrals large. 



Huge sharks, among the largest of living fishes, pelagic, living in 

 the glacial and temperate seas of the antipodes. Fragmentary fossils, 

 chiefly vertebrae and teeth, known from the Cretaceous and later 

 formations. 



Genus HALSYDRUS Fleming 



Halsydrus Fleming, Scots Mag., 1809, p. 7 ; Edinburgh Encycl. Brewster, vol. 11, 

 p. 713, 1817; Philos. Zool., vol. 2, p. 380, 1822. [Type, Halsydrus pontop- 

 pidiani Fleming (on Sea Serpent Stronsay, Orkney Is\an(ls=8qualus maxi- 

 mus Gunner).] 



Tetroras Rafinesque, Caratteri anlmali piante Sicllia, p. 11, 1810. (Type, 

 Tetroras angiova Ratiuesque=S7MaZMS maximus Gunner, monotypic.) 



Tetnoras Rafinebque, Analyse de la nature, p. 93, 1815. (Type, Tetroras 

 angiova Rafinesque.) 



