FISHES OF NEW YORK 31 



Body slender and little compressed; head flat, semicircular in 

 front, posterior margins of " hammer " short, free, the lateral 

 margins continuous with the anterior; first dorsal high, midway 

 between pectorals and ventrals; second dorsal much smaller^ 

 produced behind, higher and shorter than anal; ventral and 

 caudal fins moderate; pectorals large; mouth small; teeth 

 small, very oblique, deeply notched on the outer margin. Head 

 one sixth of total length to tip of caudal, slightly longer than 

 wide. 



Color uniform ashy, whitish beneath. Length 5 feet. At- 

 lantic and Pacific oceans, occurring on our coast from Long 

 Island southward. 



Neither Mitchill nor De Kay mentions the shovelhead shark, 

 though both record the hammerhead. Prof. Baird found it a 

 common fish in Great Egg bay in 1854, but the species was not 

 seen there by the writer in 1887. 



14 Sphyrna zygaena (Linnaeus) 



Hammerhead Shark 



Sqiialns zygaena Linnaeus, Syst Nat. ed. X, 234, 1758; Mitchill, Trans. 



Lit. & Phil. Soc. N. Y. I, 482, 1815. 

 Zygaena malleus De Kay, N. Y. Fauna, Fishes, 362, pi. 64, fig. 204, 1842; 



Stoeek, Hist. Fish. Mass. 262, pi. XXXVIII, fig. 3, 1867. 

 S\p7iyrna zygaena Joedan & Gilbeet, Bull. 16, U. S. Nat. Mus. 26, 1883; 



JoEDAN & EvEBMANN, Bull. 47, U. S. Nat. Mus. 45, 1896; Smith, Bull. 



U. S. F. C. XVII, 88, 1898. 



Body elongate, cylindric; head hammer-shaped, its width two 

 or three times its length; nostril near eye, prolonged into a 

 groove which runs along nearly the entire front margin of the- 

 head; eye large, placed near the angle formed by the anterior 

 and lateral margins of the " hammer ", enabling the animal to 

 look above and beneath; three rows of white,, hyaline teeth in 

 each jaw, those in upper jaw entire, acute, triangular, their tips 

 directed outward from the center, with a shoulder on the outer 

 side; in the center a few with shoulders on both sides; gill open- 

 ings short and small, the last smallest and placed over the pec- 

 toral base; first dorsal large, quadrilateral, slightly behind pec- 

 torals, higher than wide, deeply concave behind, and pointed 



