134 FISHES I HAVE KNOWN 



ferocious, that they do not preferably attack man, 

 but are cowardly and need not be feared, as 

 shown in the fact that the South Sea Islanders 

 and the West Indians ignore them. This is 

 certainly not true of sharks in Australia. Many 

 fatalities are recorded of victims to the ground- 

 sharks, and all swimming-baths in the various 

 harbours are carefully protected by iron netting. 

 Divers tell blood-curdling stories of contact with 

 these monsters, and it is probably only their 

 strange appearance in a helmet with glass eyes 

 that deters the shark from attacking them. In- 

 stances of hordes of sharks following boatloads of 

 shipwrecked crews in the Pacific, threatening every 

 moment to capsize them, are common enough. 



There is a gruesome tradition in Sydney that 

 years ago, when the emigrant ship Catherine 

 Adamson went ashore on Middle Head, the 

 rescuers pulled into their boats many a still- 

 palpitating corpse, from which these sea-tigers 

 had torn off legs and arms and great bits of 

 flesh ; in some instances nothing but the head 

 remained. 



I was once badly scared in Sydney. In a 

 cove close to where I lived on the North Shore, 

 the back fin of an immense shark had been seen 

 for a week, when suddenly it disappeared. Not 



