Aug. lo, 1876] 



NATURE 



3'3 



THE BASKING SHARK 



TO many it may be a quite new and strange fact that 

 the Basking Shark, almost the largest fish now 

 living, is to be commonly met with at certain seasons 

 around the western part of the British Islands. The 

 fine specimens recently added to the zoological collections 

 of the British Museum and the Royal Dublin Society 

 have excited some wonder ; but the popular mind, while 

 it associates sharks with tropical seas and coral reefs, 

 seems as yet hardly to have taken in the fact that if it 

 wants to 5>ee about the biggest of all sharks in 

 small shoals, playfully gambolling, it need wander 

 no farther than to the Atlantic coast of Ireland. 

 There, towards the end of April, and often all 

 through May, these Basking Sharks will be met 

 with. They have even been counted off Tory 

 Island in shoals of from sixty to a hundred, bask- 

 ing in the bright morning suns of June. 



It is about no years ago since the esteemed 

 Bishop Gunnerus (bom 17 18, died 1773) pub- 

 lished an account of this big fish in the Trondhjem 

 Society's Journal, and a great number of authors 

 have written on the subject since then. Under 

 many local names — Basking Shark, Sun-fish, 

 Pelerin — it has been well known to fishermen ; it 

 reaches a length of 40 feet, although average-sized speci- 

 mens do not measure more than between 20 and 30 feet 

 in length ; of large size, and 5hark though it be, it would 

 appear, like many other big animals, to be of a gentle, 

 mild, and placid disposition, to be fond of sunning itself 

 on bright days, and to never interfere with mankind 

 unless when they interfere with it ; and yet with all these 

 facts in its favour, the animal being, so to speak, 

 common, having local names, being of a size not easily 

 overlooked, and not being, like its cousin the Blue Shark, 

 a man-eating devil, this Selache maximus was very little 

 heard of and less known until the other day. Twelve 

 months ago Dumeril, in his " Ichthyologie G^n^rale," 

 could with truth write about the specimen in the Museum 

 at Paris : " II semble etre, jusqu'k present, le seul repr^- 

 sentant dans les Musses de I'Europe centrale de cette 

 ^norme esp^ce des Mers du Nord.'' To this moment 

 nothing very exact is known as to its food. Pennant 

 thought it fed on marine plants, Linnaeus considered its 

 food to be medusae ; some fishermen foolishly think it lives 

 on herrings ; and as to its times and seasons nothing is 

 known. Why does it come from north to south, 

 and why then go north again ? 



So little being known about its form and habits, 

 it is not much to be wondered at that very little 

 is known about its anatomy ; and yet Sir Everard 

 Home wrote an anatomical account of it, which is 

 to be found in the Philosophical Transactions for 

 1809, in which he tells us that he found in the 

 stomach of this fish structures showing a link in 

 the gradation of animals between the whale tribe 

 and the cartilaginous fishes. Why, to work out 

 this idea alone ought to send the comparative 

 anatomists off at once to Tory Island or Bofin.^ 

 We would, however, refer to another anatomical 

 peculiarity, which, had it been known to Sir E. 

 Home, would doubtless have clenched his argument, 

 namely, the presence of rays or fringes of a whale- 

 bone-like substance along the gill-openings. It is true 

 that Gunnerus in 1766 refers to these strange fringes ; 

 it is true that in the museum of that far north city of 

 Trondhjem — and within view of the wondrous old cathedral 

 where Gunnerus lies buried, and where to this day Norway's 

 kings are crowned — there is to be seen a piece of one of 

 them ; that other Northern Museums, those of Christiania, 

 Kiel, and Copenhagen also possess pieces, and equally 



' Islands off the west aoast of Ireland — well known localities for this 

 shark. 



true, that during all these days Gunnerus's statements had 

 been overlooked, and these fringes were a puzzle to every- 

 one who examined them. Prof. Hannover, indeed, in 

 1867, from their minute structure, described them, and 

 thought they were planted on the outside of the fish's 

 skin, like the long spines of certain rays. 



Prof. Steenstrup, in whose charge the specimen we 

 figure is, and to whose kindness we are indebted for the 

 figure (i), having made up his mind that it did belong to 

 the Basking Shark, proceeded to work out us history, and 

 so came upon Gunnerus's description, which enabled him 



Fig. I. 



to suggest that this shark must have the interior of its 

 mouth furnished with branchial fringes of a peculiar 

 nature. He further argued that these must act as strainers ; 

 that the shark takes in whole volumes of minute food, 

 catches it on these fringes, and then swallows it. He 

 declares it to be a great mistake to call this fish a 

 carnivore, that is, if he eats flesh at all, it is small 

 flesh, not big flesh. He then objects to the writer of 

 these lines, when describing a shark found in the Sey-^ 

 chelles — " which is, the north whale excepted, the largest 

 of living animals" — saying, "contrary to the habits of 

 sharks, this one is not a carnivorous, but a herbivorous 

 fish," as being too much on the other extreme. My 

 excellent friend is right, and I have now no doubt that 

 both these big, lubberly beasts — which in their mouth have 

 scarcely more than the name of te^th — feed on all sorts 

 of minute oceanic creatures, frequently taking in with 

 them floating algae. And he will be glid to know that, 

 acting on the hint in his p^per, when Mr. Cullen, the 

 assistant in the Trinity College Dublin Museum, went 

 down to Bofin in May of last year, to preserve for 



Fig. 3. 



Dr. Carte the specimen now in the Dublin Museum, 

 the first thing he did was to put his hand into the still 

 quite fresh branchial openings, when he at once felt what 

 Gunnerus had felt in 1766 — the whalebone-1 ke fringes. It 

 is to be hoped that my colleague. Prof. Macalisier, wiU 

 ere long give an account of this specimen ; m the mean- 

 while a description of the annexed (fig. 2) drawng of 

 these fringes — now for the first lime figured in situ — will 

 not be without some interest. 



The gill-openings are five in number on each side of 

 the neck. The first pair almost meeting on the top of the 

 back. A thought here strikes us. As a rule these gill 



Q2 



