CHONDEOPTBETGIAJJfS. 431 



requin himself^ and fight him toOj with such pluck, reso- 

 lution, and fury, that though the greatly superior weight 

 of the other at length prevails, the victor does not leave 

 the bloody battle-field scatheless, but with a settled con- 

 viction that one more such conquest would prove too 

 much for him. We never saw any of these sea-terma- 

 gants alive and in action, and must therefore refer the 

 reader for fuU particulars to M. Lacepede, who had that 

 advantage; but, to judge from sundry recently dead spe- 

 cimens, with fins down, tail at rest, and one eye only to 

 be seen at a time, as the hammer-head rested on the 

 pavement, he was quite ill-looking enough to justify a 

 full belief in all that biographers have recorded against 

 him. 



These are the only three sharks of which the ancients 

 have left us any clearly discriminative account, though 

 they were doubtless acquainted with many other species 

 as well, which frequent southern seas. It must have 

 been one of this terrible tribe, and probably the white 

 shark, to which Oppian refers in the latter part of the 

 fifth Halieutic. 



' The gashed and gory carcase, stretched at fiill length (a ghastly 

 spectacle), is even yet an object of recoil and superstitious dread 

 to the assembled crowd. A vague fear of his vengeance keeps 

 the most curious of the captors awhile aloof; at length some ven- 

 ture to approach ; one man looks into the gigantic jaws, and 

 points out to his comrades a triple tier of polished and sharp 

 teeth ; another wonders at the width of back ; a third admires 

 the herculean mould of the lately terrible tail ; a landsman, over- 

 awed, beholding the unsightly fish from a distance, exclaims, 

 ' May the earth, which I now feel under me, and which has 

 hitherto supplied my daUy wants, receive, when I yield it, my 

 latest breath, from her bosom ! Preserve me, O Jupiter, from 

 such perils as this, and be pleased to accept aU my offerings to 

 thee on dry land. May no thin plank ever interpose an uncer- 

 tain protection beween me and the boisterous deep. Preserve me, 

 O Neptune, from the terrors of the rising storm ; and may I not, 

 as the surge dashes over the deck, be whirled amidst the de- 



