THE ANNALS 



AND 



MAGAZINE OF NATURAL HISTORY. 



[SECOND SERIES.] 

 No. 41. MAY 1851. 



XXXrV.— Contributions to the Natural History of the Shark. By 

 Richard Hill, Corr. Mem. Zool. Soc. Lond., and M. C. Roy. 

 Agr. Soc. Jam. 



Spanish-Town, Jamaica, August 1850. 



Observing, when I was at Port Henderson in 1842, that when- 

 ever the sein was hauled the fishermen caught numerous young 

 Sharks, it became evident to me, that under ordinary circum- 

 stances, these ravenous fishes are ground-feeders ; and that the 

 structure of their mouth, far beneath the snout, and entering the 

 origin of the trunk, fits them especially for snatching up their 

 prey from the ground, when they quarter over a shoal, like a 

 hound scenting and beating over a field. I could not, however, 

 at the time I made the remark, reconcile the predilection of the 

 same fishes for hunting at the surface of the sea, with their habit 

 of hounding for their prey in deep waters. I think I have now 

 found an explanation for this contradictory instinct. We have a 

 proximate solution for the difference of habit in the viviparous 

 nature of this family of Cartilaginous Fishes. 



Cartilaginous Fishes are endowed with a peculiar generative 

 oeconomy. They procreate in coitu, whereas the Osseous Fishes 

 almost universally (the exceptions are veiy few) cast their spawn 

 without contact ; that is, the female deposits the ova, and the 

 male the seminal fluid independently. Impregnation is effected 

 by diffusion, just as the pollen of plants is disseminated from one 

 flower to another, or is conveyed through the air from the male 

 to the female tree. 



Let us devote a moment's attention to the instincts and habits 

 of some three or four of the Osseous Fishes the most important to 

 man. We begin with the Pilchard and the Herring. In carry- 

 ing on the great purpose of organic life — "increase and mul- 

 tiply" — at certain seasons, within certain ranges of latitude, 

 these two species of fishes approach the coasts in inconceivably 



Ann. if Ma^. N. Hist. Ser. 2. Vol. \ii. 23 



