SHAKKS AND RAY-riSHES. 
5 
lost siglit of; and indeed they ai-e in many respects scarcely 
less insisted on by naturalists of our own day, although un- 
consciously, than they were by writers of an older date; who 
were disposed to make them exclusively the foundation of their 
arrangements. 
There is no reason why the lion should occupy the elevated 
place he does in popular estimation as the king of beasts, except 
with reference to his power over the weaker inhabitants of the 
wilderness. It is his united strength and courage which establish 
his rank in the estimation of writers whose labours have been 
directed to the history of the habits of the animal creation. TVe 
grant indeed, that in the opinion of the moralist and philosopher, 
the possession of mere strength and commanding — perhaps fero- 
cious, powers and dispositions, should not he estimated as the 
sufficient mark to which the supreme rank ought to be assigned. 
But the human mind has shewn a disposition to regard these 
qualities as such a mark; and as a beginning even in this kind 
of superiority must be somewhere, and the consent of ages has 
ascribed it among beasts to the lion, and with the same conviction 
or feeling, among birds to the eagle; we are only proceeding in 
the same direction when we view the Sharks as holding the same 
relative rank among the families of the ocean. They live by the 
exertion of similar powers with those of their analogies of the 
land and air, and even in general with more insatiable appetites 
and energies. 
But there are other circumstances involved in the structure of 
this class of fishes which are worthy of our notice, as tending 
to shew the station they hold among their fellow natives of the 
deep. 
The skin of Sharks bears a nearer resemblance in toughness 
and strength to the covering of the higher order of animals, than 
to the other classes of fishes, and even than does that of their 
kindred chondropterygians or plagiostomes — the Bays; the latter 
of which orders has this covering for the most part soft and 
moist, although in several of the genera it is studded with 
tubercles; but instead of scales the skin is closely covered and 
defended with spines, which in substance bear a not very distant 
likeness to horn, and are even more firm and compact. Beneath 
the skin is a layer of fibres which have the strength and ap- 
pearance of tendons, which cross each other in opposite directions 
