38 THOSE OTHER ANIMALS. 



apparatus that enables him to sweep up the tiny inhabitants 

 of the seas. He is too slow in swimming, and infinitely too 

 slow in turning, to catch any fish that did not deliberately 

 swim into his mouth ; and unless we suppose that, as is sai d 

 of the snake, he exercises a magnetic influence over fish, 

 and causes them to rush headlong to destruction between 

 his jaws, it is impossible to imagine how he obtains a suffi- 

 cient supply of food for his sustenance. As it would appear 

 that it is only when he gets the good luck to light upon 

 a dead or badly injured fish that the shark has ever the 

 opportunity of making a really square meal, his prolonged 

 fasts certainly furnish an ample explanation and excuse for 

 his alleged savagery of disposition. 



The scientific name of sharks is squalida, though why 

 scientific men should have fixed upon such a title is not 

 clear, for there is to the ordinary eye nothing particularly 

 ragged or squalid about the shark's appearance. The shark 

 belongs to the same section as the ray, which fish, however, 

 resembles its cousin the shark only in the awkward position 

 of its mouth, and in its astonishing power of biting, it being 

 able to indent an iron boat-hook or bar. The immemorial 

 enmity between man and the snake on land is not less 

 bitter and deep-seated than that which man on the sea 

 cherishes against the shark. In this case, however, it is 

 one-sided, everything pointing to the fact that so far from 

 having any hostile feeling for man, the shark has an ex- 

 cessive liking for him. It is as unjust to charge the shark 

 with hostility towards man as it would be to accuse man 

 of a savage animosity against the ox or the sheep. To the 

 shark . man is food to be eaten, that is all ; and man, the 

 almost universal devourer, is the last who is entitled to blame 



