Haast. — On Lamna cornubica in New Zealand. 237 



Art. XXXII. — On the Occurrence of Lamna cornubica, Porbeagle Sliark, 

 Flem.j the Maho of the Maoris^ in New Zealand. 



By Julius Haast, Pb.D., F.RS., Director of the Canterbury Museum. 



[Read before the Philosophical Institute of Canterbury, 2nd April, 1874.] 



The Canterbury Museum received a few days ago from Mr. W. H. Webb, 

 of Laverick's Bay, Banks Peninsula, the skin of a shark, which upon 

 examination proved to belong to Lamna cornubica, the Porbeagle shark of 

 older English authors, and which, according to Dr. Gunther (Catalogue of 

 Fishes, British Museum, Vol. YIII., page 390), has hitherto been observed 

 only in the northern hemisphere, as the specimens alluded to in that standard 

 work were obtained in the Atlantic, the Mediterranean, and Japan. 



Captain Hutton in his Catalogue of New Zealand Fishes, page 77, refers 

 the teeth of the Mako of the Maoris, and which are worn by the latter as 

 ear-ornaments, to Lamna glauca. If the specimens examined by him belong 

 really to that or the nearly allied species L. spallanzanii, they ought to be 

 without basal cusps, whilst the specimen under consideration, and now the 

 property of the Canterbury Museum, has the basal cusps well developed. 

 From this fact alone it appears that the latter cannot belong to Lamna glauca, 

 but must represent some other species, either of cosmopolitan habits or 

 confined to the southern hemisphere, as for example, the Notidanus indicus 

 of the southern seas which represents the Notidanus griseus of the northern 

 hemisphere. 



Two Maori carvers from Poverty Bay, Northern Island, at present 

 occupied at the museum, pronounced the skin to belong to a young Mako and 

 informed me that this fish when in an adult state was about 12 feet long, and 

 that the teeth in old and young had always the small basal cusps on each side 

 of the lanceolate tooth ; consequently, if the teeth examined by Captain Hutton 

 are without basal cusps, there must be several species of Lamna inhabiting the 

 coast of New Zealand. 



The animal to which the skin belonged was 4 feet 10 inches long; head, 

 back, sides and fins are of a slaty colour; chin, belly and posterior side of the 

 fins near the root dirty white; teeth lanceolate, long, with sharp lateral edges, 

 with a small basal cusp on each side, three rows in each jaw and parallel with 

 each other. 



In the lower jaw the first outer row contains three on each side, whilst the 

 second and third rows consist of thirteen each. 



In the upper jaw there are three teeth on each side of the outer row and 

 thirteen teeth in the middle and inner rows respectively; of these the third 

 tooth on each side and in each row is remarkably small. 



