210 
Mr. Home on the Mode of breeding 
reason to believe, that it is very general, since the eggs or 
the empty shells belonging to this tribe of fishes, are rarely 
met with. 
The squalus maximus, I have no doubt, is of this kind ; and 
from the following memorandum of my late friend Dr. 
Patrick Russell, given to me by Sir Joseph Banks, the large 
shark met with between the Tropics, breeds in the same way. 
“ A shark caught on the 14th of November, 1781, in lat. 7 0 
N. measured 8 feet 7 inches, the tail included. The head and 
body of a dark bluish colour, the breast and belly of a silver 
white. Upon opening the belly, the two oviducts were dis- 
tended with young ones contained within an inner cavity, 
swimming in a white gelatinous liquid, thicker than the liquor 
amnios of quadrupeds. 
“ The right oviduct contained 21 young ones, the left 20 ; of 
these 25 were males, and 16 females ; they were all nearly of 
the same length, between 9 and 10 inches, and each of them 
had the yolk attached to its belly, by a chord of considerable 
length. 
“ In the lat. 5 0 N. another female shark was caught 7 feet 
long ; it had only 8 young ones, 4 on each side/’ 
Of the oviparous shark I could obtain no information, but 
what is contained in Bohadsch, in whose works there is an 
engraving of the egg, and of the shark to which it belonged, 
caught in the Mediterranean. So little has this subject been 
attended to by naturalists, that no mention is made that I know 
of, in any author, of such eggs being met with upon the 
coast of Great Britain ; I was, however, so fortunate as to 
find a shark’s egg on the sea beach at Worthing in Sussex, in 
Sept. 1809, and in the course of that month, procured several 
