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Appendices to Fourth Annual Report 



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NOTE»'Oi?-THE GREENLAND SHARK (Lcemar^ws micrac«23Wfe««)i 



fish rarely straying to the British shores. Its natural home is doubtless in 

 the qolder , waters of the Arctic Circle, where it is said to occur in , con- 

 siderable abundance ; but when its occurrence is compared with that of the 

 more truly British sharks, it would appear to be at least as common in our 

 waters as any other. Since 1803 there are records of its capture which go 

 to prove that scarcely a year passes without one or more specimens being 

 obtained, and it is worthy of note that nearly all these specimens were 

 captured, on the East Coast. The most southerly point from which this 

 shark is recorded is the Seine, where one was taken in 1832.* Three were 

 caught off the Bell Rock in 1873, and two at Scarborough in 1878. Three 

 specimens .are recorded from Aberdeen, and two from the Dogger, Bapky 

 besides a member of single ones from different parts of the coast. . . . .,-|', 



The two which I dissected were caught, within a few days of cact 

 other, in Janua-ry of this year. The first was a fine specimen 1 1 feet long, 

 which was brought up by one of the trawlers of the General Steanj 

 Eishing Company 8 miles SE. of the May Island. When it was slung up, 

 clear of the water, a cod and three baited hooks with snoods attached fell 

 out of its mouth, and I afterwards found a large cod hook fixed in the 

 gullet. Its stomach contained one herring, five cod, one conger eel, and 

 a considerable quantity of partly digested fish. 



The second shark was only 5 feet long, and was caught by line fisher- 

 mep. The stomach of this one contained three herrings and about a score 

 of cuttle fish beaks. , 



The distinctive characters of the Greenland shark, as given by Gunther 

 and Day, may be said to be the following : — All the fins small and spine- 

 less ; two dorsal and a pair of anal fins. Skin uniformly covered with 

 minute tubercles. Nostrils near the extremity of the snout. No nicti- 

 tating membrane to eye. Mouth with a deep oblique groove at its 

 angles; the upper teeth small, narrow, conical, and in several rows; the 

 lower teeth more numerous than upper, also in several rows, each tooth 

 having its point so much turned aside that the inner margin forms a 

 cutting, non-serrated edge. Spiracles of moderate width. 



Almost invariably when this shark is captured, a parasite, Lerneopoda 

 elongata^ is found attached to one or other of its eyes. In the first of 

 the two sharks mentioned, the parasite was on the right eye, and had 

 attained the length of fully 2 inches. In the smaller specimen both eyes 

 were affected in this manner. 



Taking the larger shark, — the mouth had a transverse diameter of 

 about 1 foot. The teeth have already been described; there were six rows 

 in the upper and eight in the lower jaw. The oesophagus was wide and 

 elastic, so that any large body taken into the mouth could readily be 

 swallowed. The stomach was an immense oval sac, with a peculiar 

 arrangement at its pyloric extremity. This was first described by Professor 



* Day's British Fishes, vol. ii. p. 321, 



