Angling for Sharks 83 



belly is a large patch, which is luminous in the night. There 

 is in St. Petersburg a painting of this shark, made at 

 Misaki in the night by Dr. Peter Schmidt, who worked with 

 no light but that which the little shark gave out while set in 

 a jar of salt water. 



We named the little shark Etmopterus lucifer, for Luci- 

 fer, you know, means light-bearer. The first one of that 

 name, you know, carried light into very dark places, when 

 he was shut out from heaven. On another page there is a 

 picture of it. 



Along with the thresher shark, in most warm seas, there 

 lives another big shark — ^the hammer-head, which is one 

 of the strangest beasts in all the seas. And his strangeness 

 is all in the shape of his head — quite like a hammer — very 

 broad, very short, with a big eye on each end of the hammer. 

 The hammer-head has a bad reputation, which it does not 

 deserve, for it never hurt any man so far as we know, and 

 spends its days destroying that curse of the sea, the sting 

 ray. The sting ray, of any species, is a kind of big skate or 

 ray, with a big bony saw-edged spine, or sting, near the base 

 of its tail, with which it can inflict a ghastly cut. The slime 

 on this saw-edged spine often produces blood poisoning in 

 man or fish. The hammer-head doesn't care for this, but 

 goes after the sting ray as a hog does for a rattlesnake, tears 

 him to pieces and swallows him. If you cut open the next 

 hammer-head you catch, the chances are that you will find 

 his throat full of stings from sting rays, stuck fast in the 

 skin, like a bunch of arrows. 



Then you will understand what a faithful servant this 

 grotesque shark really is, and you will have sympathy for 

 him in all his troubles. Besides, the sting rays feed on 

 oysters, and by the natural current of events, the more ham- 

 mer-heads there are in the harbor, the more oysters there 

 are for you. 



