THE HERRING AND OTHER FISH 351 
stomach, it came placidly back and went on feeding off 
the same dead whale in the same place. In large numbers 
these sharks haunt the ice-fields, where the sealers have 
left the mutilated carcasses of the young seals. I have 
driven a boat-hook into one bigger than myself, as it lay 
basking on the surface of the water, and hauled it easily 
out on the ice without its making any notable resistance. 
On one occasion, with the help of a couple of men, I hauled 
out five from one hole through the ice in this same way. 
The only commercially important part of the sleeper is 
the liver, which yields fifteen to thirty gallons of very ex- 
cellent oil; for the purpose of securing this oil a shark- 
fishery grew up on the coasts of Norway and Iceland. Our 
fishermen sometimes use a lump of its skin-covered flesh 
for scrubbing the floor. The flesh is white and nauseous, 
and even our dogs, voracious as they are, will scarcely eat 
it. This shark seems quite indifferent to man’s presence, 
and is not a man-eater. It is almost impossible to conceive 
that the shark’s stomach should still, by some races of hu- 
man beings, be considered the gate of heaven; and that 
living children be offered by mothers to its rapacity that 
the children may enter paradise through that probably 
most repulsive of all forms of death. 
