OF THE UNITED STATES 



71 



tance, as barrels of oil were made from their livers, and the skius 

 are of no little value, for, owing to the fine and peculiar nature 

 of its scaling, it is used with great advantage, when dried, in pol- 

 ishing metals of various kinds, and for similar purposes. The 

 female of this fish is considerably larger than the male, and I 

 have understood that as many as 20,000 have been taken in a 

 seine at one time. We might say a great deal more about dog- 

 fishes, but I prefer to pass to the consideration of some of the 

 big man-eating sharks. The common " White Shark " occurs at 

 rare intervals upon our Atlantic coast, and of it a great many 

 accounts have been given. It is a perfect pest in the Mediter- 

 ranean Sea, and as I write these lines, I have at hand the jaw of 

 an enormous specimen of this species, that was collected on the 

 coast of Italy, near the harbor of Naples. The fish was found 



Fig. 11. The White Shark (Carcharias). 



Drawn by the Author and very much reduced. 



dead upon the beach, and it had swallowed the entire body of a 

 Neapolitan soldier, down as far as the man's knees. The victim 

 was taken out, and it was found that he had on his uniform and 

 part of his accoutrements. This jaw I have had for many years, 

 and it is armed with hideous rows upon rows of jagged teeth. 

 Only the front row of these is fully functional, and when any of 

 them are lost they are soon replaced by the tooth from the row 

 next behind. With the greatest ease, it can be slid over a large 

 man. In the British Museum there is the jaw of a shark, prob- 

 ably of this species or genus, that belongs to an individual up- 

 ward of forty feet in length. Such a shark, however, is but a 

 pigmy to the specimens that existed in former ages of the world's 



