300 SPORT IN NORTH AMERICA. 



ligiously ; but I must confess that I could not bring 

 myself to like it anyhow. Even the sailors fought 

 very shy of it I noticed, and some of them confessed 

 to me in confidence that ^vhat had the greatest 

 tendency to make them partial to a dinner of 

 shark's flesh, was the double allowance of liquor 

 which they received upon every occasion of catching 

 a shark. Moreover, it was a slight change from the 

 eternal salt pork of the ship's bill of fare. 



The head of the Newport shark figured a long 

 time in my bachelor's crib at New York; but before 

 leaving for Europe, I made a present of it to my 

 friend Russell, one of the best advocates there, and 

 one of the brightest ornaments of the American 

 bar, and I am sure that he still has it in remem- 

 brance of me.* 



There are three kinds of sharks. The commonest 

 is the grey, and there is the blue shark, and the 

 hammer-headed shark. The least dangerous is the 

 blue shark, and yet I had an awkward adventure 

 with these brutes on the shores of New Jersey, 

 where I was once spending the summer. 



A friend and I had sailed out with an experienced 

 fisherman of the coast to enjoy the sport of fishing 

 for blue fish — a kind of catfish of very delicate 

 flavour and as abundant on the American coasts 



* In the middle ages, the jewellers used to mount sharks' teeth in 

 silver, as simple country fulk believed them to be charms against fever. 

 The niggers in North America have kept up the custom ; only they 

 mount them in gold. 



