DrEcEMBER 20, 1918] 
résumé of all the known accounts of the fish. 
However, during the summer of 1917, while 
at work on the Bibliography of Fishes in the 
department of ichthyology of the American 
Museum of Natural History in New York 
City, I found a few hitherto unknown refer- 
ences to the whale shark. Since these are of 
themselves interesting and since they extend 
our knowledge of its recorded habitat, it seems 
worth while to collect and publish them as a 
postscript to the paper referred to above. 
Lest any one, seeing the title only, should be 
misled by it, it may be well to say by way of 
introduction to our subject, that in the Re- 
port of the British Association for the Ad- 
vancement of Science (Liverpool Meeting, 
1870), 1871, page 171, occurs the title “On 
Rhinodon typicus, a Rare Shark lately Added 
to the Free Museum, Liverpool.” However, 
no data whatever are given. 
Furthermore, Liitken’s* paper, “Om Hap- 
lggten Rhinodon ” (1874), consists of but a few 
remarks by this distinguished ichthyologist on 
the similarity of the gill apparatus of Rhino- 
don to that of the great basking shark, Selache 
maxima. Further than this mere statement, 
the paper in question does not concern us. 
Taking our references chronologically, the 
next one is very interesting. Julian Thomas 
(1887) while at anchor in Red Scar Bay, on 
the south side of New Guinea says that :* 
A school of sharks twenty-five to forty feet long 
now surrounded us. ... The fish came right under- 
neath the bows, and then quietly floated astern on 
top of the water. We could have touched him 
with our hands by leaning over the bulwarks. .. . 
This was a shark—an enormous mottled brute, 
which seemed as long as our ship. He turned 
partly over and showed his frightful jaws, which 
would have taken in a man whole. He was by the 
computation of the captain and all hands, at least 
forty feet long, with a six-foot ‘‘beam.’’ ... 
The sharks were all around, not one of them ap- 
8 Liitken, C. F., ‘‘Om Haplegten Rhinodon,’’ 
Videnskabelige Meddelelser Naturhistoriske Foren- 
ing, Kjobenhavyn aarene 1873, 1874, p. 2. 
4Thomas, Julian, ‘‘Cannibals and Convicts: 
Notes of Personal Experiences in the Western 
Pacific,’’ London, 1887, p. 380. 
SCIENCE 
623 
parently under twenty-five or thirty feet long. 
The ‘‘boomer’’ appeared to lead them, and they 
swam around us both to port and starboard. It 
almost seemed as if they meant to attack the ship. 
This great fish was impervious to bullets, 
for when fired at with rifles, “The bullets 
ricochetted off the brute’s back” and “shot 
after shot was fired without much apparent 
effect.” Thomas calls this shark Selache 
maxima, probably because that was the largest 
shark known to him, but there is no reason 
to doubt its being Rhineodon typus, the giant 
of all the sharks. His reference to the color 
and great size effectually settles that. 
Those who read my larger article will recall 
that Captain Steuart® says that around the 
coasts of Ceylon the spotted shark was always 
surrounded by smaller sharks of which it was 
the leader. Also Thomas’s ricochetting bul- 
lets recall what Mr. Brooks wrote me as to 
the impermeability of the hide of the second 
Florida specimen to rifle balls. 
Of somewhat doubtful value is the following 
brief account found in a work compiled and 
edited by Paul Fountain from the notes of 
Thomas Ward® of Australia (1907). It is of 
doubtful value because, although the fish 
passed in full view at a distance of eighty 
yards, no mention is made of the yellow spots 
and vertical bars which ornament it. These 
may have been indistinct, or the fish may have 
been in line with the sun, or it may have been 
a specimen of Selache maxima, to the presence 
of which in antipodal waters as recorded by 
the Australian ichthyologists the present 
writer has recently called attention.? Be the 
explanation what it may, the incident is given 
for what it is worth. 
Fountain had been cruising near the head 
of the Great Australian Bight, when he fell 
5 Steuart, James, ‘‘ Notes on Ceylon, ete.,’’? Lon- 
don, 1862, p. 156. 
@Ward, Thomas, Paul Fountain, editor, 
‘*Rambles of an Australian Naturalist,’’ 1907, 
pp. 119-120. 
7Gudger, E. W., ‘‘On the Occurrence in the 
Southern Hemisphere of the Basking or Bone 
Shark, Cetorhinus mazimus,’’ Science, 1915, N. S., 
Vol. 42, pp. 653-656. 
