182 THE NATURALIST IN BERMUDA. 
I was never so fortunate as to examine one (the mackerel 
porbeagle excepted), and therefore remain in ignorance as to 
the species. I have a tooth in my possession taken from a 
large shark, which, with many others, followed a dead whale 
into a small bay on the south shore, where the whalers towed 
it for the purpose of flinching. When attacked with har- 
poons, this shark seized the bottom of the boat with its 
capacious jaws, and left two or three of its teeth in the wood- 
work. The jaws were presented to the Bermuda Museum, 
but having been improperly prepared, became so offensive as 
to cause them to be thrown away. The teeth were as sharp 
as lancets, literally so, when first brought in. 
On the Ist June, 1849, a sperm whale drifted ashore to 
the south of the Light-house, supposed to have been killed 
and lost by the crew of an American whaler then cruizing 
off the Islands. One side of this whale was almost entirely 
consumed by sharks, there being about fifty of these vora- 
cious animals about the carcass. One of them was killed, 
and measured seven feet in length; two buckets full of 
blubber, and a portion of a green turtle were taken from its 
stomach. 
Again, on the 27th September following, a coloured man 
called at my house with the backbone of a large shark for 
sale. He stated that the shark was killed “away in the 
deeps” from a small row-boat, a few days previously ; not 
with hook and line, but by running a noose over its tail, 
and towing the animal to the shore, when it was found to 
have “drowned itself” My informant assured me that it 
measured nine feet in length, and that he sold the jaws, con- 
taining six rows of teeth, to an officer at the dockyard. 
Judging from the vertebra I saw, I do not think the length 
