CARTILAQINOUS J I S H E S . 



349 



Head of White Shark. 



The White Shark is a well-known scourge of the Medi- 

 terranean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean. This is the creature so 

 detested by sailors, who, when they have caught a " shirk," sub- 

 ject it to every possible indignity. 



This voracious creature 

 has been known to swallow an 

 entire man, and as it is in the 

 habit of lurking about ships 

 for the sake of the scraps 

 thrown overboard, and almost 

 invariably swallows whatever 

 is cast over the side, the con- 

 tents of its stomach are often 

 of a most heterogeneous description. The sailors always amuse 

 themselves by seeing what the shark had " stowed away," and the 

 substances thus brought to light have been most curious. The 

 entire contents of a lady's work-basket, down to the scissors, were 

 found in the interior of one shark, and another had actually swal- 

 lowed an entire bull's hide — a circumstance which led ,the operating 

 sailor to remark that the shark had swallowed a bull, but could not 

 ■" digest" the hide. 



The amphibious South Sea Islanders stand in great dread 

 of the Shark, and with good reason, for not a year elapses without 

 several victims being offered to the rapacity of this terrific animal. 

 Nearly thirty of the natives of the Society Islands were destroyed 

 at one time by the sharks. A storm had so injured the canoe in 

 which they were passing from one island to another, that they were 

 forced to take refuge on a raft hastily formed of the fragments of 

 their canoe. Their weight sunk the raft a foot or two below the 

 surface of the water, and, dreadful to say, the sharks surrounded 

 them and dragged them off the raft one by one, until the lightened 

 raft rose above the water and preserved the few survivors. 



The Hammer-headed Shark inhabits the same latitudes. 



This curiously constructed fish closely resembles the white shark 



in all respects but the head, which is widened out at each side, 



exactly like a double-headed hammer or mallet. The eyes, being 



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