124 FISHERMEN'S OWN BOOK. 



the Mediterranean and in the warm seas of most parts of the globe, espe- 

 cially of the East Indies, and generally in deep water. The common spe- 

 cies of America,' between Massachusetts and Brazil, once considered the 

 Z. viallciis, has been described by Dr. Storer as the Z. araiata ; it attains a 

 length of eleven or twelve feet, and is much dreaded by fishermen." 



The shark's mouth is one of the most formidable means of destruction we 

 know of among animals anywhere. It is on the under side of the head, 

 some distance back of the end of the snout, and crescent-shaped. The 

 teeth are in three to seven close, crescentric, parallel rows, the largest and 

 oldest ones in front, the smaller ones behind — that is, further inside the 

 mouth. Some sharks have more than two hundred of these teeth. They 

 are three-cornered, exceedingly thin and sharp-pointed, and in some cases 

 have saw-edges. When the mouth is wide open they stand erect, almost 

 protrude from the lip, but when it is closed they lie down flat, out of the 

 way. When those in the front row wear out or break off, the next tow be- 

 hind is gradually pushed forward to take their place. The shark thus has 

 reserves of teeth which, operated by the tough and exceedingly muscular 

 mechanism of the jaws, are able to bite through anything, especially since 

 the bite is nearly always accompanied by a rolling or wrenching movement, 

 which causes the teeth to act like a saw, and thus cut through the quicker. 

 For some of the sharks in the South seas it would only be a moderate 

 mouthful to take half a man's body in, and clip him off at the waist. Nev- 

 ertheless, we believe fewer persons have lost their lives by sharks than we 

 generally suppose, though many narrow escapes are constantly happening. 



A veteran New York fisherman says : "Shark fishing pays, and it's great 

 fun for a green hand. The business is carried on principally for the oil 

 and fins. A big place for them is the White Sea, and again in Iceland. 

 The sharks they get there are from thirty to fifty feet long. Sometimes they 

 run in around the Grand Bank and are caught. About four barrels of oil is 

 the average from a good-sized fellow. My shark fishing was all done near 

 New Smyrna, Florida. Some sharks would give half a barrel of oil, but they 

 were generally under fifteen feet. We usually hired from fifteen to twenty 

 darkies to do the pulling and hauling, and camped out during the months 

 of July, August and September, moving up and down whenever the biting 

 was poor. We carried our pots and things along and tried out the livers, 

 and shipped the oil by a smack up to Fernandina, where it was all bought 

 by one man. I don't know what he did with it. Some said he sold it for 

 cod liver oil. We used a regular hook and line, only it was a rope,«nd the 

 hook was a foot long, and made fast to the line by a three-foot chain. Fish 

 bait was the best. We kept about twenty of these lines over all the time 

 at regular intervals along wherever the water deepened quick from the 

 shore. All the lines were about fifty yards long. Sometimes they fool over 



