Natural Histury of the Shark. 3G9 



the sea, where he quarters over the shoal, the circumstances are 

 different, and there he chases and pursues his prey, and takes it 

 with ease, for he can press it to the earth, stop its progress, and 

 snap it up. A man floundering in the water is a very different 

 thing from a fish swimming. The very attention he draws to 

 himself by being something strange, proves fatal to him. It is 

 like the fish struggling on the hook. The condition of both is 

 unusual, and both, in attracting notice, attract the rapacity, and 

 excite the appetite of the Shark. 



I would just briefly advert to the similar predilection for the 

 sunny surface of the ocean, without the predaceous instinct, 

 which occurs in the "Basking Shark," or "Sun Fish," — the 

 Selachus maximus. It is the very largest of the fish tribe, — 

 usually thirty feet in length, and only exceeded in size by some 

 of the Cetacea; but it is at the same time as gentle as it is 

 gigantic. It has no ferocity of disposition ; it allows itself to be 

 approached and handled. It moves about in small squads of 

 seven or eight, and seldom otherwise than in pairs. Its mouth 

 is situated at the apex of the snout, and the teeth are small. Its 

 food is Medusce, and other molluscous products. It usually 

 swims deliberately, and so near to the surface, that the upper 

 fin is above the water; but it sometimes gambols among the 

 waves, and leaps into the air, so intensely does it pursue its 

 purpose of enjoying the light and heat. It continues in the 

 British seas till the latter end of Jixly, when it disappears. The 

 Greenland Shark, the Squalus borealis of Scoresby, has similar 

 habits, with a similar gentleness of disposition. Our Devil-fish 

 {Rata Banksiana) is another instance of the same requirement 

 of air and sunshine, on account of viviparous maternity. The 

 immense disk of this fish, fifteen and twenty feet in diameter, 

 floating almost motionless on the water in the breeding season, 

 is a sufficiently familiar object. In Lieutenant Lamont's spirited 

 account of the capture of one of these monster Rays in Kingston 

 Harboui-, in the year 1834*, we have a reason for the fish being 

 descried floating as usual near the surface, and moving slowly 

 about. The animal was a female, and the young one taken from 

 it, some twenty pounds in weight, had acquired its perfect foetal 

 growth, and was probably the last of the monster progeny of the 

 season. 



I conclude these suggestions for an intelligible history of the 

 Shark, by observing, in conclusion, that whatever may be the 

 intensity of summer heat in temperate zones, the Carcharias, or 

 the species most distinctively known as the Shark, limits its 



* Edinburgh Philos. Journal, vol. xi. — " Notice of the Colossal Ray, &c., 

 at Port-Royal, Jamaica." 



Ann. i^' Mag. N. Hist. Ser. 2. Vol. v'li. 24 



