198 THE INHABITANTS OF THE SEA. • 



with the shells. When caught, it fastens with indiscriminate 

 rage upon anything within its reach, fighting desperately, even 

 when out of its own element, and inflicting severe wounds if not 

 cautiously avoided. Schonfeld relates that it will seize on an 

 anchor, and leave the marks of its teeth behind, and Steller in- 

 forms us that one which he saw taken on the coast of Kamschatka 

 frantically seized a cutlass with which it was attempted to be 

 killed, and broke it in pieces as if it had been made of glass. 

 No wonder that the fishermen, dreading its bite, endeavour as 

 soon as possible to render it harmless by heavy blows upon the 

 head. The great size of the monster, which in the British waters 

 attains the length of six or seven feet, and in the colder and 

 more extreme northern seas is said to become still larger, renders 

 it one of the most formidable denizens of the ocean. It com- 

 monly frequents the deep parts of the sea, but approaches the 

 coasts in spring to deposit its spawn among the marine plants. 

 Fortunately for its more active neighbours, it swims but slowly, 

 and glides along with the serpentine motion of the eel. 



Far more dreadful, from its gigantic size and power, is the 

 White Shark (Squalus carcharias), whose jaws are likewise 



White Shark. 



furnished with from three to six rows of strong, flat, triangular, 

 sharp-pointed, and finely serrated teeth, which it can raise or 

 depress at pleasure. This tyrant of the seas grows to a length of 

 thirty feet, and its prodigious strength may be judged of from the 

 fact that a young shark, only six feet in length, is able to break 

 a man's leg by a stroke of its tail. Thus, when a shark is caught 

 with a baited hook at sea, and drawn upon deck, the sailors' first 

 act is to chop off its tail, ( to prevent the mischief otherwise to 

 be apprehended from its enormous strength. An anecdote 

 related by Hughes, the well-known and esteemed author of the 



