TE STORY OP ThE WHALE SHARK: (RHINODON 
Pye US oMiELEH) 
By BARTON A. BEAN 
In the month of April, 1828, there was captured by fishermen in 
Table Bay, Cape of Good Hope, one of the most interesting of living 
animals, being remarkable not only for its unusual structure but for 
the huge size it attains. The whale shark unlike other sharks has 
a terminal mouth, and the jaws are provided with ribbon-like dental 
plates of extremely numerous and minute teeth. This shark is said 
to grow to a length of sixty feet and is exceeded in size by no living 
animal other than the whale-bone or right whale. As Dr. Gill has 
expressed it to the writer it is: “ The greatest, the most gigantic, of 
the sharks, not uncommon in the Indian Ocean, but which, on ac- 
count of its great size, is represented by remains in few museums and 
is but little known.” 
This huge animal, like its relative of the north—the basking shark 
—and like the whale, lives on minute animals such as copepods, 
other crustaceans, and mollusks, which flourish in great abundance 
about the surface of the ocean. We find nothing recorded as to its 
manner of reproduction, but assume that like its related forms it is 
ovoviviparous. It is a slow moving, apathetic shark, harmless to 
man, and is often found basking or sleeping on the surface of the 
sea. It is known in the Indian Ocean as “Mhor,” at the Seychelles 
as “ Chagrin,” in the Gulf of California as “ Tiburon Ballenas ” or 
whale shark, in the Gulf of Panama the natives call it “ tintoreva,” 
and the one stranded on the coast of Florida was referred to as 
an “ East Indian basking shark.” 
We find little recorded as to the use made of this gigantic shark. 
In a letter on shark fishing at Kurrachee, province of Scinde, British © 
India (to which Dr. Gill has kindly called my attention), Dr. Buist 
in 1850 wrote: 
“The great basking shark or mhor, is always harpooned; it is found float- 
ing or asleep near the surface of the water; it is then stuck with a harpoon 
of the size and form indicated in the annexed woodcut. 
“The fish, once struck, is allowed to run till tired; it is then pulled in, and 
beaten with clubs till stunned. A large hook is now hooked into its eyes or 
nostrils, or wherever it can be got most easily attached, and by this the shark 
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