2-254 The Zoologist — August, 1870. 



itself up in the net, and by so doing had tied down its fins and gill- 

 covers, and was consequently enfeebled by partial suffocation when I 

 took it. With some difficulty my boatman succeeded in getting it 

 clear of the net and in slipping a tow-rope over its head, and it was 

 towed on shore uninjured, where I had ample opportunity of 

 examining it alive and in the water, as well as afterwards on shore 

 alive and dead. It was a shark of which I had never seen a specimen 

 before, and of very peculiar appearance. It had a small head, a very 

 remarkable snout, with a beaked projection at the end of it, a very 

 wide mouth, enormous gills, and very great fin power. 



The skin of the fish was smooth from head to tail, and rough the 

 other way, but was neither so rough nor so smooth as in most of our 

 English sharks. 



The colour of the fish, fins and all (except the snout), was dark 

 dusky blue, a little lighter immediately on the belly, and lighter still 

 under the pectorals, but in no part approaching white. The snout 

 shaded off from the prevailing colour to a dull red, and from that to 

 a dirty white in front just under the beaked projection. 



The snout was also covered all over with little marks, as though 

 one had cut the skin half through with a penknife in a great number 

 of places, without attempting to make the incisions in any regular 

 series. Afterwards 1 ascertained that this punctured skin rested on a 

 strong gristle, within which was a cavity filled with a gelatinous 

 substance. On the under and outer parts of the snout were single- 

 lobed spiracles, and above and behind them and nearer the lower than 

 the upper part of the snout were the eyes, round and not oblong, and 

 gazing laterally and not forward, and having internally the mobile 

 formation usual in the eyes of sharks. Just before the eyes on the top 

 of the head was a protuberance covered by the skin, and just behind 

 the eyes the head proper terminated. The under part of the head 

 was occupied by a very remarkable mouth, the lower jaw of which 

 extended forward to the plane of the eye, and which when open was 

 of a comparative size and capacity, of which I never saw the equal in 

 any shark, or indeed other fish except the angler {Lophus piscatorius). 

 In each jaw were three and in some parts four irregular rows of rudi- 

 mentary teeth, not one of them one-sixteenth of an inch long, and 

 detached from each other. They were inclined inwards, but were so 

 small and blunt that they presented no obstacle to the running of a 

 thumb-nail backwards and forwards over them. There was a smooth 

 tongue not six inches long and serai-dctachcd, and immediately at the 



