THE HERRING AND OTHER FISH 351 



stomach, it came placidly back and went on feeding off 

 the same dead whale in the same place. In large numbers 

 these sharks haunt the ice-fields, where the sealers have 

 left the mutilated carcasses of the young seals. I have 

 driven a boat-hook into one bigger than myself, as it lay 

 basking on the surface of the water, and hauled it easily 

 out on the ice without its making any notable resistance. 

 On one occasion, with the help of a couple of men, I hauled 

 out five from one hole through the ice in this same way. 



The only commercially important part of the sleeper is 

 the liver, which yields fifteen to thirty gallons of very ex- 

 cellent oil; for the purpose of securing this oil a shark- 

 fishery grew up on the coasts of Norway and Iceland. Our 

 fishermen sometimes use a lump of its skin-covered flesh 

 for scrubbing the floor. The flesh is white and nauseous, 

 and even our dogs, voracious as they are, will scarcely eat 

 it. This shark seems quite indifferent to man's presence, 

 and is not a man-eater. It is almost impossible to conceive 

 that the shark's stomach should still, by some races of hu- 

 man beings, be considered the gate of heaven; and that 

 living children be offered by mothers to its rapacity that 

 the children may enter paradise through that probably 

 most repulsive of all forms of death. 



