Giant Fish of Florida 
been given. It must, of course, be distinguished from the 
swordfish, which is more closely allied to the mackerel, and 
which has a long pointed weapon without teeth on its edges. 
Any one wishing to catch a sawfish on the rod ‘must seek 
such weird game in the isolated deep holes in the lagoons and 
shallows. The average depth will not be more than three or 
four feet, but every now and then the lead will go down into a 
much deeper hole, and there lie the sawfish. A well-known 
American angler caught one weighing 700 Ib. in this way. The 
chief food of the sawfish is said to consist of horseshoe crabs, 
but it also in all probability slashes round with its great saw 
and stuns sufficient fish fora meal. I have seen young saw- 
fish out there with the scales of smaller fish impaled on the 
teeth of their saws. Evidently these teeth must grow blunt 
with age, for piercing a fish scale is a feat that would certainly 
be beyond the saw-teeth in all the larger specimens that have 
come under my notice. 
On an earlier page I have given the portrait of a baby 
hammerhead shark, drawing the reader’s attention to the fact 
that the “hammer” was not yet developed. This difference 
in two stages of growth may be appreciated by a comparison 
with the subject of the accompanying photograph, in which the 
curious hammer, with an eye at either end, is plainly seen. 
The hammerhead shark (Sphyrna zygaena) is a voracious species, 
yet when swimming after a ship it has all the graceful, undulating 
movement of the family. 
195 
