198 THE [INHABITANTS OF THE SEA. 
with the shells) When caught, it fastens with indiscriminate 
rage upon anything within its reach, fighting desperately, even 
when out of its own element, and inflicting severe wounds if not 
cautiously avoided. Schonfeld relates that it will seize on an 
anchor, and leave the marks of its teeth behind, and Steller in- 
forms us that one which he saw taken on the coast of Kamschatka 
frantically seized a cutlass with which it was attempted to be 
killed, and broke it in pieces as if it had been made of glass. 
No wonder that the fishermen, dreading its bite, endeavour as 
soon as possible to render it harmless by heavy blows upon the 
head. The great size of the monster, which in the British waters 
attains the length of six or seven feet, and in the colder and 
more extreme northern seas is said to become still larger, renders 
it one of the most formidable denizens of the ocean. It com- 
monly frequents the deep parts of the sea, but approaches the 
coasts in spring to deposit its spawn among the marine plants. 
Fortunately for its more active neighbours, it swims but slowly, 
and glides along with the serpentine motion of the eel. 
Far more dreadful, from its gigantic size and power, is the 
White Shark (Squalus carcharias), whose jaws are likewise 
White Shark. 
furnished with from three to six rows of strong, flat, triangular, 
sharp-pointed, and finely serrated teeth, which it can raise or 
depress at pleasure. This tyrant of the seas grows to a length of 
thirty feet, and its prodigious strength may be judged of from the 
fact that a young shark, only six feet in length, is able to break 
a man’s leg by a stroke of its tail, Thus, whena shark is caught 
with a baited hook at sea, and drawn upon deck, the sailors’ first 
act is to chop off its tail, to prevent the mischief otherwise to 
be apprehended from its enormous strength. An anecdote 
related by Hughes, the well-known and esteemed author of the 
