108 MARINE AND FRESHWATER FISHES 



large eyes, which in freshly caught examples are of a 

 brilliant sea-green hue, seem specially adapted for its 

 accredited deep-water habitat. An excellent cast of the 

 Arctic Chimera, made from a specimen captured on the 

 coast of Norway, will be found in the Buckland Collection. 

 A length of from two and a half to three feet represents 

 the ordinary measurement of this species. 



SUB-ORDER II. — Sharks and Rays {Plagiostomata). 



Gill-openings five to seven in number ; palatal apparatus 

 united to the skull through the intermedium of a suspen- 

 sorium ; the teeth numerous. 



DIVISION I. — Shark Tribe (Selachoidei). 



Body elongate subcylindrical, terminating anteriorly in 

 a more or less pointed snout, beneath which the mouth is 

 situated, and posteriorly in a powerful flexible blade-like 

 tail ; gill-openings lateral. 



Although usually relegated by the popular mind to the 

 seas of the tropics, a very considerable number of Sharks 

 either permanently inhabit, or more or less frequently visit, 

 British waters. Including the Dog-fishes, whose anatomical 

 structure is essentially identical with that of the larger 

 Sharks, no less than sixteen species claim admission upon 

 the British list, the order assigned to them in the leading 

 ichthyological text-books being as follows : — The Blue 

 Shark (Carcharias glaucus), No 198, a rapacious species 

 growing from eight or ten to upwards of fourteen feet in 

 length, not unfrequent off our coasts so far north as the 

 Orkneys during the summer months, and which on rare 

 occasions has been known to attack the human species. 



