204 THE OCEAN. 
moment to seize prey: and as they are so planted in 
the jaw that each tooth is capable of independent 
motion, being furnished with its own muscles, and as 
the power of the jaws is enormous, they form one of 
the most terrific and formidable apparatus existing 
for the supply of carnivorous appetite. The fatal 
voracity of this animal is well known: instances are 
numerous of swimmers in tropical seas having been 
severed in twain at one snap, or deprived of limbs, 
while, on more than one occasion, the whole body of 
a man has been taken from this living sepulchre. 
Yet this sanguinary voracity is but the result of an 
unerring instinct implanted in the animal by Gop, 
without the, exercise of which its life could not be 
sustained: and therefore it seems not only foolish, but 
even sinful, to entertain feelings of personal revenge 
against it, as if it were endowed with human reason, 
“knowing good and evil.” Ido not know that it is 
wrong to kill an animal so destructive and dan- 
.gerous; I reprobate only the imputation to it of 
human motives, and the staining a useful act with 
unnecessary cruelty. 
'The mode by which the race of these formidable 
creatures is continued, differing as it does so greatly 
from that of most other fishes, is exceedingly curious. 
The Shark, instead of depositing some millions of 
eggs in a season, like the Cod or the Herring, pro- 
duces two eggs, of a square or oblong form, the coat 
of which is composed of a tough horny substance; 
each corner is prolonged into a tendril, of which the 
two which are next the tail of the enclosed fish are 
stronger and more prehensile than the other pair. 
