SHARK. 435 



four inches and a half in the enamel, or the part visible 

 above the socket, he was prompted to discover, if pos- 

 sible, the size of its original possessor ; for this purpose 

 he measured first the teeth, and next the bodies of' all 

 the squali accessible to him in the museums of Paris, and 

 found in every case, that the relative proportion they 

 bore to each other was as one to two himdred; and apply- 

 ing this general scale to the particular tooth from Dax, 

 M. Lacepede found that he held the relic of a creature 

 that in the days of the flesh must have been fuU seventy 

 feet long. The proportions between the body and the 

 head being also definite, it was as readily made clear that 

 a squalus stretching to this length had jaws with a bow 

 above thirteen feet, and a mouth capable of gaping more 

 than twenty-six feet round. In comparison with such a 

 squalus, those chronicled by Rondolet requiring two 

 horses to drag them, and some mentioned by other au- 

 thors, weighing from three to four thousand pounds, 

 dwindle into mere minnows and gudgeons.* 



It is an interesting fact in the history of sharks — and 

 one by no means without precedent in our own — ^that 

 violent passions, parasites, and indigestions, do not seem 

 to ruffle the equable current of the blood, their pulse 

 continuing regular, and averaging only sixty beats in a 

 minute. As with us a good digestion (the common 

 accompaniment of a quiet pulse) may be and often is 

 connected with a bad disposition ; who knows but that 

 Heliogabalus and Nero, those human types and repre- 

 sentatives of the genus shark in so many other particu- 



wMch from the etape, and because St. Paul was supposed to have 

 changed aJl the great serpents of that island into stone, are called 

 serpents' tongues, 'glossopetres.' 



* Lacepede gives the relative proportions between the largest 

 fossil, and some existing sharks, as 543 : 27 ; which are much 

 greater in the smaller species. 



u 2 



