A Plea for the Shark III 



innate ferocity and calculating devilishness. As I 

 have often had the pleasure in saying, the Shark eats 

 man, not because he loves man to eat, but because man 

 when he falls overboard is usually easy to get. If the 

 man be a good noisy swimmer, no Shark will venture 

 near, for they are, though tormented with hunger, 

 a most nervous and timid race, and, indeed, always 

 seem to me to lose a great many opportunities through 

 diffidence. I do not love the Shark in any of his 

 varieties, but I do love justice, and so, in spite of my 

 predilections against the Shark, I have endeavoured 

 to write of him (or her) fairly, as I would wish to be 

 written about myself if I were a Shark. I am very 

 glad I am not. 



A very large section of the Shark family live at 

 immense depths. So it has been discovered of late 

 years by the indefatigable labours of such men as 

 Messrs. Goode and Bean, of the Smithsonian Institute 

 at Washington, and the Italian professors who have 

 made oceanic ichthyology their special study. But, 

 unlike most of the deep-sea fishes, as opposed to the 

 surface or near-the-surface fish, the Sharks do not 

 confine themselves to the profundities. They ap- 

 parently seek those mysterious depths to breed — 

 many of them deposit their eggs in carefully adapted 

 purses of toughened membrane so arranged that they 

 will open of themselves at the right time, then, having 

 provided for the continuation of the species as far as 

 they are concerned, they return to the surface. Others 

 again spend all their time in the depths, except when 

 the family is coming, at which time they ascend into 

 the upper and warmer strata. For it cannot be too 

 carefully noted that below a depth of about a hundred 

 fathoms the temperature of the sea is the same every- 

 where from Pole to Pole. The exceptions to this rule 



