194 Man and Shark 



few houses in the colony were fortunate enough to enjoy the pleasant 

 light of the candle." 



In more modern times, shark oil has been used in the tempering of 

 high-grade steel, the manufacture of margarine, in pharmaceuticals, 

 the currying of leather, the making of soap and cosmetics, as an oil in 

 paints, as a lubricant of purest quality, and to clean the delicate works 

 of watches. 



But it is the adamantine hide of the shark that man has best learned 

 to utilize in a variety of intriguing and serviceable ways. Sharkskin began 

 its long career in the Occident at the hands of ancient Greek artisans 

 who discovered that the hide could be used to smooth hard wood to 

 a high polish. In the age of sail, mariners caught sharks, skinned them 

 and dried the skins to use for holystoning the wooden decks. Pieces of 

 sharkskin were wrapped around oars to cut down wear on the wood in 

 the oarlock. Eventually, sharkskin came to be called shagreen, a word 

 apparently derived from the Persian saghari and Turkish sagri, words 

 which, oddly enough, have nothing to do with sharks. 



Saghari or sagri is the tough skin of the rump of a horse, which was 

 made granular by imbedding hard seeds into the softened skin, then 

 drying it. The seeds fell out, leaving permanent indentations in the skin. 

 Sharkskin, with its pattern of denticles, resembled saghari or sagri, 

 though in sharkskin the denticles were permanent fixtures. 



The Persian saghari, with its rough, granular surface, was found to 

 be ideal for sword hilts, for it gave swordsmen a good purchase on 

 their weapons. The Japanese are believed to have been the first to use 

 sharkskin and ray skin for this same purpose. The favorite sword hilt 

 of the Japanese came from what they call the Pearl ray, the same ray 

 (Dasyatis sephen) that provides the Sumatrans with their tambourines. 



The Pearl ray produced a beautiful sword hilt, for the Japanese 

 used the skin from the center of the ray's upper side, which bears three 

 large, distinctive denticles that give the appearance of a row of inlaid 

 pearls. The sword hilt had a grimmer utilitarian purpose, too— even when 

 blood-smeared, the rough-textured skin provided a dependable grip. 



Some other Japanese uses of shark products include Shark-amino, 

 an "elixir of life" made from shark cartilage; a gelatinous glue made 

 from cartilage or skin too "stale" to be tanned as leather; shark-liver 

 oil; and, from the shark's pancreas, the drugs insulin and pancreatin, an 

 extract used as a digestive aid. Although shark leather was made during 

 World War II in Japan, its quahty was not good, and hardly any shark 

 tanning is being done commercially today. However, Professor Wataru 

 Shimizu of Kyoto University says that the skin of the Aiza?ne (Centro- 

 phonis atromarginatus) , a member of the family Squalidae, is still used 

 on sword hilts "to prevent them from becoming slippery." 



