434 PROSE HAXIBTJTICS. 



n'a point d'oreilles.' Now a shark's appetite can never 

 be appeased ; for, in addition to this bilious diathesis, he 

 is not a careful masticator, but hastily bolting his food, 

 produces thereby not only the moroseness of indigestion, 

 but a whole host of tanias,* which goad as well as irri- 

 tate the intestine to that degree, that the poor squalus 

 is sometimes quite beside himself from the torment, and 

 rushes, like a blind Polyphemus, through the waves in 

 search of anything to cram down his maw, that may allay 

 such urgent distress ; he does not seek to be cruel, but 

 he is cruelly famished, and must satisfy, not only his 

 own ravenous appetite, but the constant demands of these 

 internal parasites, either with dead or living aidmals ; and 

 therefore it is that, sped as from a catapult, he pounces 

 on a quarry, and gorges sometimes so much as to pro- 

 trude a large portion of the intestine, which, after one of 

 these crapidous repasts, may not uufrequently be seen 

 trailing several feet from the body. 



Great as are the dimensions of many existing squali, 

 there can be no doubt that some of the antediluvian 

 period greatly exceeded in size any species at present 

 known. We are indebted to M. Lacepede for this dis- 

 covery, and the ingenious procedure by which he arrived 

 at it deserves notice. M. Lacepede was one of the first 

 naturalists who appHed the since well imderstood and 

 more fuUy developed principle of ^ex pede Herculem' to 

 objects of natural history. Having received from Dax, in 

 the Pyrenees, a shark's toothf of the very unusual size of 



* These tEenias, when not satisfied with what they find in the 

 intestines, bore their way through, and terebrate at last into the 

 abdominal cavity. 



t Time was when these sharks' teeth were a gainful trade, and 

 as much faith placed in them as in the minute osteology of saints ; 

 they were supposed to keep the wearer of them from mishaps, to 

 cure him of a fever without physic, and break down a stone in his 

 bladder without help of surgeon. Malta abounds in these teeth. 



