CARTILAGINOUS FISHES. 2Cs 



The White Shark is sometimes seen to rank even among whales 

 for magnitude; and is found from twenty to thirty feet long. Some 

 assert that they have seen them of four thousand pounds weight ; and 

 we are told particularly of one, that had a human corpse in his belly. 

 The head is large, and somewhat flatted ; the snout long, and the 

 eyes large. The mouth is enormously wide, as is the throat, and ca- 

 pable of swallowing a man with great ease. But its furniture of teeth 

 is still more terrible ; of these there are six rows, extremely hard, 

 sharp-pointed, and of a wedgelike figure. It is asserted that there 

 are seventy-two in each jaw, which make a hundred and forty-four in 

 the whole ; yet others think that their number is uncertain ;* and that 

 in proportion as the animal grows older, these terrible instruments of 

 destruction are found to increase. With these the jaws, both above 

 and below, appear planted all over ; but the animal has the power of 

 erecting or depressing them at pleasure. When the shark is at rest, 

 they lie quite flat in his mouth; but when he prepares to seize his 

 prey, he erects all this dreadful apparatus, by the help of a set of mus- 

 cles that join them to the jaw; and the animal he seizes, dies, pierced 

 with a hundred wounds, in a moment. 



Nor is this fish less terrible to behold as to the rest of his form : his 

 fins are larger in proportion; he is furnished with great goggle eyes, 

 that he turns with ease on every side, so as to see his prey behind him 

 as well as before ; and his whole aspect is marked with a character 

 of malignity : his skin also is rough, hard, and prickly; being that 

 substance which covers instrument cases, called shagreen. 



As the shark is thus formidable in his appearance, so is he also 

 dreadful from his courage and activity. No fish can swim so fast as 

 he ; none so constantly employed in swimming : he outstrips the 

 swiftest ships, plays round them, darts out before them, returns, seems 

 to gaze at the passengers, and all the while does not seem to exhibit 

 the smallest symptoms of an effort to proceed. Such amazing pow- 

 ers, with such great appetites for destruction, would quickly unpeople 

 even the ocean, but, providentially, the shark s upper jaw projects so 

 far above the lower, that he is obliged to turn on one side, (not on his 

 back, as is generally supposed,) to seize his prey. As this takes some 

 small time to perform, the animal pursued seizes that opportunity to 

 make its escape. 



Still, however, the depredations he commits are frequent and for- 

 midable. The shark is the dread of sailors in all hot climates ; where, 

 like a greedy robber, he attends the ships, in expectation of what may 

 drop overboard. A man who unfortunately falls into the sea at sucr 

 a time, is sure to perish without mercy. A sailor that was bathing in 

 the Mediterranean, near Antibes, in the year 1744, while he was 

 swimming about fifty yards from the ship, perceived a monstrous fish 

 making towards him, and surveying him on every side, as fish are of 

 ten seen to look round a bait. The poor man, struck with terror al 

 its approach, cried out to his companions in the vessel to take him on 

 board. They accordingly threw him a rope with the utmost expedi 

 tion, and were drawing him up by the ship's side, when the shark dart 

 ed after him from the deep, and snapped off his leg. 



Mr. Pennant tells us, that the master of a Guinea ship, finding a 

 rage for suicide prevail among his slaves, from a notio^ the unhipr* 



