360 Zoological N. Y. Zoological Society. [1;19 



cessfully harpooned and brought to shore, I was enabled to take 

 photographs of two specimens, male and female, of this remark- 

 able shark, and to preserve all the more important portions of 

 each for a more careful examination in Dublin. This shark, 

 which is— the north whale excepted — the largest of living ani- 

 mals, would appear to have a very limited geographical distribu- 

 tion, and, contrary to the general habits of the true shark, it is 

 not a carnivorous but a herbivorous fish. I have seen specimens 

 that I believed to have exceeded fifty feet in length, and many 

 trustworthy men, accustomed to calculate the length of the 

 sperm whale (one of the most important stations for this ceta- 

 cean is off He Denis, one of the Seychelles Group) have told me 

 of specimens measuring upwards of seventy feet in length; it is 

 a quiet, harmless fish, with a mouth of immense width, furnished 

 with small teeth; it now and then rubs itself against a large 

 pirogue, and as a consequence upsetting it, but under such cir- 

 cumstances it never attacks or molests the men, and while it 

 reigns as a monster among sharks, is not, despite its size, as for- 

 midable as the common dog-fish. A stray specimen, about seven- 

 teen feet long, was found many years ago floating near Cape- 

 town, and was named by Sir A. Smith, Rhinodon typicus, but it 

 would appear that nothing more has until now been known 

 about this fish." 



In his Catalogue of Fishes in the British Museum, Volume 

 VIII, (1870), Giinther quotes all the preceding writers, espe- 

 cially Wright, who had presented part of a pair of jaws to the 

 Museum, but adds no new data. 



Much of Wright's data is repeated in a paper published in 

 1877, and in his book, Animal Life, published in 1879. Now it 

 will be noticed that Wright says that these sharks were common 

 at the Seychelles. He saw at least four of them, he photo- 

 graphed two, and dissected at least two, and sent parts to Dublin 

 for further study; but he never published his photographs, and 

 never described any of the external or internal structures of 

 the fish. To make sure of these points, I addressed a letter to 

 the Librarian of Trinity College, Dublin, asking about these 

 preserved parts. 



This letter was answered by Doctor Henry H. Dixon, Pro- 

 fessor of Botany in Trinity College, who kindly writes that nei- 



