540 FISHES. , 



milies, friends, and country. To convince them that at least they 

 should not reanimate their bodies, he ordered one of their corpses 

 to be tied by the heels to a rope, and lowered into the sea i and 

 though it was drawn up again as fast as the united force of the 

 crew could 1)e exerted, yet, in that short space, the sharks had de- 

 voured every part but the feet, which were secured at the end of 

 the cord." Swimmers very often perish by them : sometimes they 

 lose an arm or a leg, and sometimes are bit quite asunder, serving 

 but for two morsels for this ravenous animal : a melancholy tale of 

 this kind, is recited in a West-Indian ballad, preserved in Dr. Percy's 

 Reliques of ancient English Poetry. 



The size to which the Shark sometimes grows, is far superior to 

 that mentioned in the former part of the present description : we 

 are informed by Gill ins, that a shark was seen of the weight of four 

 thousand pounds, and that in the belly of one was found an entire 

 human body ; and Muller asserts, that in a shark taken at the isle of 

 St. Margaret, was found a horse *, which had probably been thrown 

 overboard from some ship. The size of the fossil teeth of this spe. 

 cies, so often found in the isle of Malta, and elsewhere, affords a 

 convincing proof of the enormous specimens which have once ex- 

 isted. In the British Museum are teeth of this kind, measuring at 

 least four inches and a half from the point to the base, and six 

 inches from the point to the corner : the animal, therefore, to which 

 such teeth belonged, must have been equal to the largest of the 

 cetacea in volume, and we may well admit the probability of a 

 human body being swallowed by such a fish, not only entire, but 

 without a wound j and on this supposition it is that the shark has 

 been imagined by some to have been the fish ordained for the tem- 

 porary confinement of the prophet Jonas f. 



The internal parts of the shark present many remarkable particu- 

 lars : the brain is small : the heart furnished with one ventricle, 

 and one auricle, which latter is of a very large size, and receives 

 the vena cava ; the aorta, and other arteries, are of great strength 5 



* The shark does not spare even its own species. A Laplander, according to 

 Leems, had taken a shark, and fastened it to his canoe ; but soon missed it, 

 without being able to guess how : in a short time afterwards he caught a second 

 of much larger size, in which, when opened, he found the one he had lost. 



f Jonam prophetam, ut veteres Herculem trinoctem, in hujus ventriculo 

 f ridui spatio haesisse verosimile est. Lin. Syst. Nat. 



