1915] Gudger: The Whale Shark. 361 



ther preserved material nor photographs of Wright's specimens 

 are known at the College. Dr. Dixon notes that Wright appar- 

 ently made a report at the 1869 meeting of the British Associa- 

 tion under the title, "Rhinodon typicus, the largest known 

 shark," but that this was never published. Further than this, 

 neither he nor Mr. Alfred de Burgh, assistant librarian, working 

 from the published bibliography of Wright's papers, have been 

 able to find any further published data. It is a great loss to 

 science that Wright made so little of his extraordinary oppor- 

 tunities. 



In his "Introduction to the Study of Fishes" (1880), Gun- 

 ther gives a very general description of the Whale Shark based 

 evidently on Smith's and Wright's papers. There is nothing 

 in it to detain us, since the new bit of data refers to its food 

 and will be considered later. 



In the Annals and Magazine of Natural History for 1883, 

 A. Haly, director of the Colombo Museum, records the capture 

 of a R. typus near Colombo, Ceylon, in 1883. This was a female, 

 23 feet 9 inches long, and 13 feet in circumference, having a 

 mouth 3 feet wide. Before drying had taken place, the lower 

 jaw was flat underneath, grading without break into the abdo- 

 men, and projecting so far beyond the upper that its band of 

 teeth was uncovered. Haly dissected this specimen hoping to 

 find eggs or embryos but found her barren. Unfortunately he 

 gives no description of the reproductive organs. His careful 

 measurements will be given later. 



In the following year, Haly (1884) in his report for 1883 as 

 director of the museum, says that this fish was taken at Mora- 

 tuwa on January 5, 1883, and that its weight was so great that 

 even after the viscera had been removed, it was handled only 

 with the greatest difficulty. It was too large to be taken into 

 the museum after mounting, so it was necessary to convert the 

 main hall of the museum into a taxidermist's room. 



The next reported capture of the Whale Shark is in 1884 by 

 Signor G. Chierchia, whose interesting account is quoted in 

 extenso from Nature. 



"While fishing for a big shark in the Gulf of Panama during 

 the stay of our ship in Taboga Island, one day in February 

 (1883), in a dead calm, we saw several great sharks some miles 



