Holt and Calderwood — Report on the Rarer Fishes. 379 



buoj'-lines of what we considered ample length, one of the buoys disappeared 

 soon after it was shot, and we were only just in time to catch the other, and had 

 to increase its buoyancy by the addition of an empty ten-gallon spirit-carboy in 

 order to keep it at the surface. 



The operation of shooting takes about an hour and a-half, and there is then 

 an interval of about an hour and three-quarters before hauling. This last is the 

 most difficult part of the whole business, as the means employed by the Setubal 

 fishermen are decidedly primitive. A kind of derrick, consisting of a plank, 

 with a pulley at the end of it, is made fast to the mast and the false stem ; the 

 " maitresse corde " is placed on this engine, and the crew, seating themselves in 

 pairs on each thwart, haul it in hand-over-hand, whilst the skipper coils it up in 

 the stern. It is about two hours before the first line makes its appearance, when 

 it is immediately passed to the starboard quarter. Here it is hauled by three or 

 four of the crew, whilst the skipper stands by with the gafP, and another man 

 takes the hooks out of the fish, and stows away the lines ("sans grand ordre") 

 as fast as they come in. 



The whole operation (shot and haul) witnessed by Dr. Vaillant took five hours 

 and a-half, the sea meanwhile being remarkably calm. The catch was twenty-one 

 sharks and eight specimens of Mora mediterranea. 



Vaillant remarks that the presence of sand made it evident that a greater part 

 of the line had been on the bottom, and that, moreover, if the fish inhabited 

 higher zones, experience would long since have taught the fishermen the folly of 

 using so costly and cumbersome an engine as the " espinheis"* for their capture. 

 He also notes that there is on the coast a large population entirely engaged in 

 fishing, and the fact that these sharks are never caught except in the manner 

 described is a sufficient proof that they are exclusively confined to deep water. 



That they have a considerable horizontal range was evident from the capture of 

 a few small individuals belonging to some of the species fished for at Setubal, at 

 points widely distant from each other, and he is no doubt right in attributing their 

 scarcity in the collection of the expedition, as d\ie not so much to their rarity as to 

 an agility which ensures them a certain immunity from the trawl. The trawling 

 operations of the " Harlequin " in the vicinity of the spot where our specimen 

 was obtained do not throw much light on this subject, as in one haul the net was 

 capsized, and in the other nothing but the beam and irons came to the surface. 



Inquiries were made by Vaillant as to the profits arising from the Setubal 

 shark fishery, and it would appear that these are very slight. The chief com- 

 mercial product is the skin, obtained mostly from C. granulosus, which is suitable for 

 manufacture into a kind of "galuchat" (equivalent, we suppose, to the English trade 



* A name applied by the Setubal fishermen to the apperatus described on account of the resemblance 

 borne by the line and snoods to the " espinheis," or backbone of the fish. 



312 



