Occasional Notes. 177 
quite harmless, so far as man is concerned ; and but 
little damage seems as a whole to be done by them along 
the various coasts where they occur. Possibly at the 
various harbours, where their chances of picking up a 
stray sailor would be of the greatest, the noise and 
commotion caused by the shipping and steamers, maybe 
the real means of their prevention. However that may 
be, it remains a fa6l that though several species of the 
most rapacious kinds are to be obtained off our coast, it is 
but seldom that any casualties from them are reported. 
People shrimping along the shores are never interfered 
with ; boys bathing along the front of the seawall-, only 
very occasionally are reported as being attacked ; while 
sailors in the harbour itself, who now and then drop 
overboard, are almost invariably rescued, though some- 
times they disappear from sight and are never seen, 
again — presumably sucked down by some strong under- 
current, and not seized by sharks which certainly would 
have shown themselves. 
The most to be dreaded here are the blue shark and 
its allies (Carcharias) ', and the tiger shark (Galeocerdo). 
These seem to range here to about ten feet in length, 
and with a diameter of nearly two feet at their thickest 
part, larger specimens being never met with, though 
small ones are common. It seems likely that the 
very large examples are only to be taken in deeper 
water than we can boast of close to our shores. In the 
blue shark and its related forms, the teeth are very strong 
and sharp, uniformly erect and triangular, having the sides 
serrated either along the whole margin, along one side 
only, or simply at the broadened base. In the spotted 
and banded tiger shark, the teeth are deeply notched on 
Y 
