22 NATURAL HISTORY. 



touch dreaded down the coast, and to one species is attributed the 

 carious practice of laying itself out for dead, to tempt smaller fishes, 

 which come to dine, and find the tables turned on them. I have 

 not got any specimens here. 



Next come the " hammer heads " and " shovel-heads," both of the 

 genus Zygoena, most hideous brutes, named according to their 

 respective deformities. A monster-gooseberry paragraph went round 

 the Indian papers lately, about some huge "shovel-headed sharks/' 

 spotted like the pard, and capable of taking their prey without 

 turning over, seen in the Red Sea. Curiously enough some one went 

 to the trouble of suggesting " S teg o stoma tigrimim," which is indeed 

 striped (no shovel-headed shark is) but is a ground-shark, or rather 

 dog-fish, and seldom exceeds 5 feet long. 



All sharks, and the shovel-heads as much as any others, must 

 either get over their prey, or turn on their backs to seize it from 

 below, and they prefer the former manoeuvre themselves, but as they 

 are usually observed at the surface, the latter is best known to th© 

 public. 



The Zygcenas are credited with great ferocity, chiefly, I suspect, 

 from their ill looks. As a matter of fact the conformation of their 

 head, jaws, and breast, is against this, and indicates an approach to 

 the rays, and a life at the bottom, supported on prey of comparatively 

 small size. They have nothing like the gape of Carcharias. 



The Scyllidoe proper are small and comparatively sluggish and 

 harmless Selachoids, feeding mostly at the bottom upon carrion, 

 molluscs and Crustacea, spineless, and usually spotted or striped. 

 Some have two barbels. We have several species, the most notice- 

 able here is the Stegostoma tigrinum above referred to, a curious and 

 quite harmless creature, which could not bite a man, unless he put 

 his finger in its mouth. We have two specimens in our Museum. 



We have none of the spined Dog-fishes in our seas. They are a 

 very plague to the fisheries of the British Isles, and are also not- 

 able as being ovo-viviparous. I do not know whether any Indian 

 shark has this character. Their place is taken here, as hinted 

 above, by the fry of the large Car char iidce. 



The second sub-order of the Cartilaginous fishes is that of the 

 Batoidei, or saw-fishes, skates, and rays. They are all more or less 

 fiat-chested; and some of them even broader than they are long 

 (omitting the tail). They all have their gill openings below, and live 

 as a rule, mostly at the bottom, though sometimes they come to 



