NOTES AND QUERIES. 235 
others nearly so, though at that time neither the Ruffs nor the Black-tailed 
Godwits had begun to show any change. On the 21st April I was told 
that the Peewits near Minehead had eggs hard-set ; mine, however,—in the 
same place as the Ruffs and Godwits,—had not shown any signs of change 
to summer plumage, and indeed on the 6th May only one of them has 
assumed the black throat of the breeding-season, though the Ruffs and 
Black-tailed Godwits have quite completed their breeding-plumage, and the 
white mark on the fore part of the throat of a pair of Oystercatchers, in the 
same place, is rapidly becoming invisible. Two Knots, however, in the 
same place, show no inclination to change; whether they will do so when 
the weather gets warmer I cannot say—at present there is a miserably cold 
wet N.E. wind. On the 5th April, when out hunting at Halswell I saw 
the Herons again on their nests, though the keeper told me he thought 
there were not quite so many nests as last year, for, though none of their 
nesting-trees had been felled, one or two of the taller trees which they were 
in the habit of using as look-out places had been cut down in thinning the 
plantation, and the Herons did not approve of it. On the 17th we were 
there again, and the greater part of the Herons were sitting hard, but the 
keeper said he did not think any young ones had been hatched. One pair 
of the tame Herring Gulls have two eggs, and the Herring Gull and Lesser 
Black-back have paired again and made their nest, but there is no egg yet, 
and two pairs of Pink-footed Geese are sitting—Cxcit Smiru (Bishops 
Lydeard, Taunton). 
FISHES. 
The Basking Shark.—In ‘ The Zoologist’ for July, 1884, Mr. Cornish 
recorded the capture of a female Basking Shark, 9 ft. 4 in. long, which was 
“gorged to repletion with Hake and Mackerel,” remarking, that ‘the teeth 
of this specimen were conical and recurved, about half-an-inch long in the 
longest,” in two rows, except in the middle of the lower jaw, where there 
were three. This observation, so entirely at variance with my remarks 
(Brit. and Trish Fish.), published two months previously, rather surprised 
me, for I had asserted that it is not’a voracious fish, and (judging from the 
small size of its teeth and the large size of its gill-openings, which permit 
the passage of a great amount of water, as well as the presence of a peculiar 
sifting apparatus to detain minute structures) that I believed it fed on small 
animals. But not having examined a specimen in the flesh, I was unwilling 
to offer any reply at the time in your columns. When at Mevagissey, in 
Cornwall, this month, I was told of some Sharks which had been seen 
among the Mackerel, many of which latter fish had been observed bitten 
in two, and the fishermen supposed these Sharks were the culprits. On 
the morning of May 7th I received, at Cheltenham, a specimen (by rail) of 
a female, 11 ft. long, captured the previous morning off the ‘ Deadmans,” 
and which had been secured for me by Mr. Dunn. Being of the same sex 
