Natural History of the Shark. 367 



In the Shark the most perfect of the senses appear to be those 

 of smelling ^nd hearing. The power of touch however also 

 exists. It is readily detained by the enticement of tainted meat. 

 When it comes across a vessel in the open ocean, it will follow 

 it for successive days, attracted by the refuse victuals thrown 

 overboard ; but let it be a slaver, or some such ship freighted 

 with death and disease, it scents the infectious atmosphere, and 

 dogs the vessel from one coast of the Atlantic to the other. For 

 an acquaintance with the sense of touch in the Shark, we are 

 indebted to the investigations of Jacobson. In the head, and 

 gi'eat pectoral fins, he found an organ composed of ten tubes, 

 united in a spheroidal cavity filled with a viscous humour, in 

 which he traced a provision for this sense. The organ, in its 

 offices, is analogous to the mustachio in the cat and other qua- 

 drupeds, and its existence explains the custom of the fish to 

 approach and gently try its prey before it makes that retreating- 

 movement in which it turns over to seize and devour, mouth 

 upward, that which it may be said to have touched before it 

 tasted*. 



Lacepede dilates with graphic eloquence on the character of 

 the Shark. He says, " It is a formidable animal, but size alone 

 is not its attribute ; ferocity is combined with an appetite always 

 ready to devour. Impetuous in motion, greedy of blood, and 

 insatiable of prey, it may truly be described as the tiger of the 

 sea. Seeking what it wants without fear of an enemy, and pur- 

 suing with more obstinacy, attacking with more rage, and fight- 

 ing with more fury than any other inhabitant of the deep, it is 

 more dangerous than other tribes which surpass it in power.'' 

 Frederick Cuvier too speaks of it in the same tone of measured 

 horror. " The French," he says, " name this terrible animal 

 Requin or Requiem, the rest or stillness of death — in allusion 

 to the deadly character of its habits ; and when we consider its 

 enormous size and powers, the strength and number of its teeth, 

 the rapidity of its movements, its frequent appearance during 

 all the turmoil and terrors of a tempest, with death and destruction 

 apparent in every blast and every wave, to add to the horror of the 

 scene by the phosphoric light emitted from its huge body near the 

 surface of the troubled waters, with its open mouth and throat 

 ready to swallow entire the despairing sailor, we must admit the 



abundant of the Sharks, and is sometimes found in incalculable numbers, to 

 the no small annoyance of the fishermen, whose hooks they cut from the 

 lines in rapid succession. I have heard of twenty thousand taken in a sein 

 at one time." These were all young ones. — Yarrell's Brit. Fishes, vol. ii. 



Mr. Haughton James, in Old Harboiu-, procured three large seins, to be 

 joined together, and set for a whole night. The result was a take of two 

 hundred and fifty Sharks, but he caught no other fish. 



* Bulletin des Sciences par la Societe Philomathiqne, Annee 1813. 



