

134 BASKING SHARK. Class IV. 



land, where it is taken, split, and dried, and 

 used as a food among the common people. It 

 forms a sort of internal commerce, being car- 

 ried on women's backs, fourteen or sixteen 

 miles up the country, and sold or exchanged 

 for necessaries. 



* # With the anal fin. 



3. Basking. Squalus maximus. Sq. den- Sun-fish. Smith's hist. Cwk, 



tibus caninis, pinna dorsali ii. 292. Hist. JVaterford, 



anteriore majore. Syst. nat. 271. 



400. Gm. Lin. 1498. Le Squale tres grand. De la 



Brugden. Squalus maximus. Cepede Hist, des Poissons. 



Gunner Act. Nidros. iii. 33. i. 20g. 

 tab. ii. 



JlHIS species has been long known to the 

 inhabitants of the south and west of Ireland 

 and Scotland, and those of Caernarvonshire and 

 Anglesey ; but having never been considered in 

 any other than a commercial view, has till this 

 time remained undescribed by any English 

 writer; and what is worse, mistaken for and 

 confounded with the luna of Rondeletius, the 

 same that our English writers call the sun-fish. 

 The Irish and Welsh give it the same name, 

 from its lying as if to sun itself on the surface 





