WONDERS OF THE DEEP 89 



little distance froin the town of Nassau there is good 

 sport catching ' Black Fish,' as they are locally termed. 

 These fish are found in deep water, so that it is 

 necessary to play out sixty fathoms or so of line; 

 on hauling up, it is often tantalising to find that a 

 shark has been beforehand and taken the prize off 

 the hook. On one occasion this happened so 

 frequently that, in order to secure some fish and 

 get rid of the robber, the men let go a shark hook 

 and soon captured a large shark. They cut the 

 unhappy creature open, extracted the liver (which 

 contains a considerable quantity of oil), and flung 

 the carcase overboard. In another few minutes 

 there was a tug at the hook, and to the no small 

 surprise of the fishermen, they brought up the very 

 shark they had just thrown away as dead." 



Certain kinds of sharks are eaten as food by some 

 of the poorer classes of the people. Sharks are useful 

 for many purposes. They supply an inferior kind of 

 oil, and their skin, under the name of "shagreen" is 

 made extensive use of by cabinet-makers for smooth- 

 ing and polishing wood. In some parts of the world 

 the dried fins of the shark form an important article of 

 trade, the Chinese, for instance, preparing gelatine 

 from them. 



One of the strong desires of the Williamsons was 

 to take motion pictures of a shark in its native haunts 

 in some exciting situations, fighting with a man, if 

 possible, or with another shark. They were deter- 

 mined to secure such a picture, as with these scenes 

 recorded on their films they could be sure that they 



