BASKING SHARK. 



1145 



the (liiuueter of the orbits, between those of the second 

 pair three times tlie same diameter, of the third pair 

 five times, of the fourth pair seven times, and of the 

 fifth ])air nine times, in each case according to Stoker's 

 measurements. Tlic gill-rakers (tig. 332) have claimed 

 a sjiccial cliapter in literature. They are long and fine, 

 apparentl)' corneous, transversal seta?, uniserial on the 

 first and last Ijranchial arches, biserial on tlic others. 

 Even rirxNERL's descril)ed them" as foi-ming a kind of 

 strainer; and a xci'v characteristic indication of their 

 structure is his opinion that it was by clinging to 

 them tliat the proj)het Jonah escaped being engulfed in 

 the maw of his captor — a Basking Shark, not a whale, 

 being tiie monster that swallowed this remarkal)le man. 

 In 1867'', witliout knowing what the objects were 

 or whence they had come, but guided by their micro- 

 scopical texture, Hannover determined some dry frag- 

 ments of these gill-rakers, preserved in tlie ^luseums of 

 Copenhagen, Kiel, and Christiania, as a kind of squa- 

 mous or spinous growth belonging to some Ray. Tlie 

 same texture, answering to that of dentine, was detected 

 by v. Benedex in 1871' in similar substances from the 

 Antwerp Crag, and he assigned them to a Ray otherwise 

 unknown, \vliicli lie called Hannocera aurafa. Steen- 

 .STKUP (1. c.) and, after him, Geuvais (P. and H., 1. c.) 

 have since maintained both that these gill-rakers afford 

 one of the most important characters of the genus Ve- 

 torJiiniis, and that v. Bexeden's find carries tlie existence 

 of the genus back at least to the Tertiary epoch. 



The fins are very like those of the Porbeagle ; but 

 their outer (posterior) margin is less incurved. The first 

 dorsal begins at a distance from the tip of the snout 

 measuring aljout 40 — 36 %, and its base occupies about 

 10 — 9'/2 %, of the length of the body. Its height some- 

 times measures, according to Storer, 14\'2 % of the 

 length of the body. The distance between the two 

 dorsal fins is about 18' , — 19 ?^ of the said length. 

 The second dorsal and the anal fins are about '3 as 

 large as the first dorsal. The superior caudal lobe 

 measures about 19 — 21 % of the length of the body, 

 and the inferior lolie is about ^/^ as long. The median 

 breadth of the caudal fin, from the upper transverse 

 groove, is about ecpud to the length of the base of the 

 first dorsal. A little within the tij) the under margin 



of the superior lol)e lias tlie same notch as in the Por- 

 beagle. The pectoral fins arc rather more than twice 

 as long as broad. Their length is about 18* of that 

 of the body. Tlic ventral fins, according to Pavesi's 

 figures, are obli(|ucl\- ipiadrangular. Their length is 

 about the same as the breadtli of the pectorals. The 

 preabdorainal length is about e(jual to the distance be- 

 tween the beginnings of the two dorsal fins. 



The thick skin is armed with sharp and strong 

 spines — small in cmiiparison to the size of tlie body. 



■mw 



Fig. 332. Gill-rakers of the tasking Sliark .4, an t\nsccl brantliial 



arcb, on a reduced scale, after E. Perceval Wright (Aatttre, vol. XIV 



(1876), p. 313); B, part of a row of gill-rakere, nat. size, after 



Hannover .incj Steenstrup. 



"... "fine, stiff, lustrous black strings, resembling bristL 

 a round, rartilaginous arch, of a thumb's thickness". 



' D. Vid. Scls. -Math. Natur. Skr., 5:te Rsekke, Bd VII, p. 489. 



' bull. Acad. Roy. Belg., ser. 2, torn. XXXI, p. 504, pi. II, tig. 16. 



horse-liair. all with one cud attac-lic<l to and bans 



over one side of 



