134 BASKING SHARK. Class IV. 



land, where it is taken, split, and dried, and 

 used as a food among the common people. It 

 forms a sort of internal commerce, being car- 

 ried on women's backs, fourteen or sixteen 

 miles up the country, and sold or exchanged 

 for necessaries. 



** \yith the anal fin. 



3. Basking. Squalus maximus. Sq. den- Sun-^fish. Smith's hist. Cork, 



tibus caninis, pinna dorsali ii. 2Q2. Hist. Waterford, 



anteriore majore. Syst. nat. 271- 



400. Gm. Lin. 14g8. Le Squale tres grand. Be la 



Brugden. Squalus maximus. Cepede Ilist. des Poissom. 



Gunner Act. Nidros. iii. 33. i. 20g. 

 tab. ii. 



J_HIS species has been long known to the 

 inhabitants of the south and west of Ireland 

 and Scotland, and those of Caernarvonshire and 

 Anglesey ; but having never been considered in 

 any other than a commercial view, has till this 

 time remained undescribed by any English 

 writer; and what is worse, mistaken for and 

 confounded with the luna of Rondeletius, the 

 same that our English writers call the sun-fish. 

 The Irish and Welsh give it the same name, 

 from its lying as if to sun itself on the surface 



