THE GREAT WHITE SHARK 
7 1 
The Great White Shark. 
BY DAVID STARR JORDAN, STANFORD UNI- 
VERSITY, CALIFORNIA. 
While sharks are reputed to destroy 
human life in the tropics, they have 
very rarely allowed their voracity to 
overcome their natural timidity on the 
temperate coasts. For that reason, the 
assaults on our Atlantic Coast a few 
summers ago were as unexpected as 
they were unwelcome. 
It is interesting to know what species 
of shark is responsible for this and 
similar acts of destruction. They have 
been laid to Milbert’s shark ( Carchar- 
hinus milberti), one of two species of 
“dusky shark” found on our Atlantic 
Coast. But while this species, with its 
fellow, Carcharhinus obscurus, grows to 
a considerable size and has sharp teeth, 
it has never been known to attack a 
man before, and it is probably inno- 
cent. The sand shark, Carcharias lit- 
toralis, has sharp teeth and a bad tem- 
per, but it is too small to be accused of 
these deeds. Much larger, swifter and 
fiercer are the three species of mackerel 
shark, Isurus punctatus , Isurus tigris and 
Lanina nasus, all three with long, sharp, 
fanglike teeth capable of doing mischief 
if they tried. But these species are 
busy with the schools of mackerel and 
very rarely come near the coast, cer- 
tainly never to the beaches. While we 
may hold these species as suspect, they 
are probably innocent, as we have one 
culprit of which we are sure. 
A few years ago there was taken in 
New York Bay a partly grown example 
of the great white shark, Carcharodon 
carcharias. If we can ever trust a fish- 
erman’s word, this species is a real man- 
eater and always has been whenever it 
has had a chance. Its teeth are more 
than an inch long, flat, triangular and 
saw-edged, perfectly fitted for biting off 
legs. It lives in the seas of the tropics 
in both oceans as well as in the Medi- 
terranean. It ranges northward in the 
summer, but Mr. Nichols, the fish ex- 
pert of the American Museum, tells 
me that there is no other record of its 
appearance within fifty miles of New 
York. Whenever taken it will be known 
by its evenly triangular, strongly ser- 
rated teeth in five rows, about twenty- 
four in each row, and by its tail, the two 
lobes almost equal, and the side of the 
tail before the fin with a strong keel. 
The mackerel sharks have a similar tail 
but their teeth are lancetlike and with- 
out sawlike serrations. All the other 
sharks on our coast have the upper lobe 
of the tail much longer than the lower. 
The writer secured a full-grown one 
of these off Soquel in California in 1880. 
It was thirty feet long and had a partly 
grown sea lion, weighing about one 
hundred pounds, whole in its stomach. 
We may be reasonably sure that the 
attacks on bathers along our Atlantic 
shore were due not to our ordinary 
hungry but timid sharks, nor to any 
sudden change in their nature, but to 
the presence of one or more of the true 
“man-eaters,” the great white sharks, 
at home in the West Indies and strayed 
shoreward from the Gulf Stream. If 
this is the case, the affair is not likely 
to occur again. Dr. Nichols, who has 
given the record of the capture on July 
14, 1915, says that the occurrence of 
the great white shark about New York 
is “therefore unprecedented and com- 
ing just after the unprecedented acci- 
dents clearly incriminates Carcharodon 
An extinct species of this type, Car- 
charodon megalodon, must in Miocene 
times have been the terror of the seas. 
Its teeth are found in abundance in 
the phosphate beds of South Carolina, 
and in the near-by deposits of Cali- 
fornia, especially in the oil regions 
about Bakersfield. A living white shark 
thirty feet long has teeth one and one- 
fourth inches long. The teeth, exactly 
similar in form, in the fossil species 
reach a length of six inches. This in- 
dicates a shark from one hundred to 
one hundred and twenty feet in length. 
The mackerel sharks of that day were 
excessively abundant and, judging by 
the teeth, the species then existing, 
(Isurus) has tails of Agassiz, must have 
been from forty to fifty feet long. 
To our primitive ancestors a dip in 
the warm sea may have been a rare 
and risky novelty. 
An October Day. 
The sun flashed gold upon the hill. 
And silver ran the stream, 
The colors blazoned on the wood 
Surpassed an artist’s dream; 
White cloudlets drifted in the blue, 
The air was soft as May. 
Oh, isn’t it good to be alive 
On a rich October dav! 
- — Emma Peirce. 
