310 CHONDROPTERYGII. SHARK FAMILY. 



Neill and Dr. Parnell have met with it in the Firth 

 of Forth. One caught in 1834 on the coast of 

 Caithness, is preserved in the College Museum of 

 Edinburgh. This specimen measures eight and a 

 half feet in length, and four feet eight inches in 

 ^irth ; sometimes, however, examples occur exceed- 

 ing these dimensions. According to Mr. Couch, it 

 associates in small companies in pursuit of prey, 

 from which circumstance, and a distant resemblance 

 to the porpoise, it derives its name. He has found 

 the remains of cartilaginous fishes and cuttles in 

 its stomach, and in one instance three full grown 

 hakes. * The teeth are long (in the Edinburgh 

 Museum specimen, upwards of an inch in length), 

 very sharp, not serrated, but having a denticle on 

 each side at the base. They are arranged in three 

 rows, the inner one much smaller than the others. 

 When the skin is stroked backwards it feels quite 

 smooth ; the colour is described variously by dif- 

 ferent writers. Dr. Johnson says, that in his spe- 

 cimen it was greyish black, the belly white ; Dr. 

 Traill describes it as deep bluish black, t All these, 

 and other discrepancies may be accounted for by 

 difference of age. Gmelin and Turton have taken 

 the same view of the specific identity of the Port- 

 beagle and Beaumaris Sharks, as that which Mr. 

 Yarrell has arrived at as the result of personal ob- 

 servation ; Donovan and Fleming are in favour of 

 the same opinion. Dr. Traill, on the other hand, in 



* YarrelTs Brit. Fishes, vol. ii. p. 516. 



f Ency. Brit. 7th edit. Ichthyology, p. 232. 



