Among the most fascinating of natural history studies, but withal one of the most difficult, is that of the SqualidÆ, or shark family. The plodding perseverance of German professors has furnished students with an elaborate classification of these singular creatures in all their known genera, but of their habits little is really known. A mass of fable has clustered round them, much of it surviving from very remote times, and added to periodically by people who might, if they would, know better. The reiteration of shark stories has in consequence resulted in more ignorant prejudice against the really useful squalus than has perhaps fallen to the lot of any other animal, although most observant people know how absurd are many of the popular beliefs about much better known creatures. Strangely enough, the detestation in which the shark is generally held is largely the fault of sea-farers. It never seems to occur to shore-going folk how few are the opportunities obtained by the ordinary sailor-man of studying the manners and customs of the marine fauna. Merchant ships, even sailing vessels, must “make a passage” in order to pay, and, except when unfortunate enough to get becalmed for a long spell, are rarely in a position favourable to close observation of deep-sea fishes and their ways. Men-of-war, especially surveying ships, who spend much time in unfrequented waters, and are often stationary for weeks at a time, are in a much better plight, and give the eager student of marine natural history great facilities for closely watching the sea-folk. Yet those are seldom taken advantage of as they might be for the rectification of the abundant errors that are to be found in books that deal in a popular way with the life-histories of sea-monsters. The only class of mariners who have had, so to speak, the home life of the sea-people completely open to them, who for periods of time extending to three or four years were in daily contact with the usually hidden sources of oceanic lore, were the South Sea whalers, whose calling is now almost a thing of the past. But even they wasted their invaluable privileges most recklessly, the contributions which they have made to science being exceedingly trivial.

Thus it comes about that the very men who should have either verified or disproved the really stupid stories current concerning sharks have chosen instead to adopt them blindly, and have, therefore, for centuries been guilty of the most revolting cruelty towards these strange fish. In this connection it is interesting to note the remote times in which shark legends arose. Aristotle, whose multifarious researches extended into so many fields of knowledge, furnishes us with almost the first recorded mention of the shark, and his designation of them is perpetuated in the scientific nomenclature of a very numerous species to-day, the LamiÆ. From another name for the same creature p??st??, we get PristiophoridÆ, or saw-fish, a curious shark confounded by an enormous number of otherwise well-read people with swordfish (Xiphias), which is really a huge mackerel with a keen bony elongation of the upper jaw. Lycophron has recorded that Hercules, in the course of his superhuman adventures, was swallowed by a shark (????a???), in whose maw he remained for three nights (why not days as well?), thence being surnamed Trinox, or Trihesperides. Theophrastus, pupil of Aristotle and Plato, observes that the Red Sea abounds with sharks, a remark which is as true in our day as it was in his. The Hercules myth was doubtless founded upon the reports of some actual witnesses of the voracious habits of these insatiable monsters, magnified and distorted, as most natural events were in those days, by superstitious terror. Even down to the present year of grace most people believe that quite a moderate-sized squalus is capable of swallowing a man entire, in spite of the abundant ocular evidence to the contrary afforded them by the specimens in museums, whose jaws, generally denuded of flesh, give a greater idea of their capacity than is warranted by the living creature. It is refreshing to find, however, that even in those dark ages for all kinds of animals such a judicial writer as Plutarch speaks a good word for this universally feared and detested fish. He says that in parental fondness, in suavity and amiability of disposition, the shark is not excelled by any other creature. Keen as is my desire to see tardy justice awarded to the shark, I should hesitate to endorse the eminent Greek’s statement as far as the last two qualities are concerned. My long and close acquaintance with the SqualidÆ does not furnish me with any evidence in their favour on either of these heads. But in parental affection they are only equalled by the Cetacea, no other fish having, as far as I am aware, any reluctance to devour its own offspring. Plutarch’s testimony, however, speaks volumes for his powers of observation and courage of his opinions, for verily in it he is contra mundum. Oppian, having seen the body of a huge shark in the museum at Naples, voices in his fifth Halieutic the general feeling in his day by the following remarkable outburst: “May the earth which I now feel under me, and which has hitherto supplied my daily wants, receive, when I yield it, my latest breath. Preserve me, O Jupiter! from such perils as this, and be pleased to accept my offerings to thee from dry land. May no thin plank interpose an uncertain protection between me and the boisterous deep. Preserve me, O Neptune! from the terrors of the rising storm, and may I not, as the surge dashes over the deck, be ever cast out amidst the unseen perils that people the abyss. ’Twere punishment enough for a mortal to be tossed about unsepulchred on the waves, but to become the pasture of a fish, and to fill the foul maw of such a ravenous monster as I now behold, would add tenfold to the horrors of such a lot.”

Olaus Magnus, upon whom we may always depend for something startling and original both in prose and picture, exhibits to our wondering gaze an agonised swimmer rising half out of the sea with three ravenous dog-fish hanging to him as hounds to a stag. In the distance is a huge ray or skate (one of the same family, by the by) with a human face, intended probably for a kind of sea angel, towards which wondrous apparition the despairing wretch stretches forth his appealing arms. Coming down to mediÆval times, Rondolet babbles of a shark, taken at Marseilles, in whose stomach was discovered the body of a man in complete armour, a tough morsel to swallow in more senses than one. He also tells of a shark accidentally stranded near the same port and lying upon the shore with mouth wide gaping. Into this inviting portal there entered a man accompanied by a dog. The venturesome pair roamed about the darksome cavern making all sorts of strange discoveries, finally emerging into the outer air swelling with importance at having accomplished so curious a feat. Enlarging upon this most obvious “yarn,” the learned Dr. Badham gravely remarks that it greatly strengthens the probability that the fish which swallowed Jonah was a shark (Piscis anthropophagus), but that he is quite certain it could not have been a whale, from the well-known smallness of the latter’s gullet. Without commenting upon the Old Testament story, there can be no doubt whatever that in the cachalot, or sperm whale, we have a marine monster capable of swallowing Jonah and his companions of Tarshish at a gulp—I had almost said ship and all, such is the capacity of that vast cetacean’s throat. But Dr. Badham, while posing as an eminent authority, further exposes his bountiful want of acquaintance with his subject by observing that the liver of a medium-sized shark will yield two tons and a half of oil! As it is a huge shark that will scale that much altogether, he must have imagined them to be even better supplied with liver than Mulvaney’s hepatic Colonel—in fact, all liver and some over.

A very favourite shark fable is to the effect that these fish prefer negroes to Europeans as food. The inventor of this was probably PÈre Labat, a mediÆval French li—, I mean historian. After enlarging upon it for awhile he proceeds to embellish it with the addition that the shark prefers Englishmen to Frenchmen, because their flesh is more sapid and juicy from being better nourished. That was probably before the French acquired their reputation for cookery. Numberless variants of this fantastic fable are extant, all, without exception, as baseless as the original yarn from which they have lineally descended. The annals of the slave-trade have, as might be expected, produced a plentiful crop of shark stories, of which apparently only the untrue ones survive. It may perhaps be true that the fiendish flesh dealers on the “West Coast” really did surround themselves with a cordon of slaves when they went bathing in the sea, having relays ready to supply the places of those occasionally snatched away by the sharks. Highly improbable though, since it would have been so expensive. Little doubt can attach to the supposition that, with their instinct for offal so marvellously developed as it is, great numbers of sharks followed the slave-ships across the seas, from whose pestilential holds the festering corpses were daily flung. But when Pennant tells us that the slaving captains used to hang the body of a slave from yard-arm or bowsprit-end that they might be amused by the spectacle of sharks leaping twenty feet out of the sea and tearing the bodies to fragments, he is stating that which is not only grotesquely untrue, but manifestly absurd. Sharks do not leap out of water. In making this statement I am liable to be contradicted, as I have been before in the columns of the Spectator, but never, nota bene, except upon hearsay, or personal evidence that had grave elements of doubt about it. Sharks can of course raise their bodies partly out of water by an upward rush, a supreme effort rarely made by a naturally and habitually sluggish fish; but, after an experience among many thousands of sharks under the most varied conditions in all parts of the world where they abound, I repeat emphatically that it is impossible for a shark to raise his entire body out of water and seize anything suspended in the air. And anyone who has carefully watched one shark seizing anything in the water or on the surface will find it difficult to disagree with me.

One more “authority” and we will get to firsthand facts. Sir Hans Sloane, in a very particular account of the shark, remarkable in many respects for its accuracy, perpetrates the following:—“It has several ducts on the head filled with a sort of gelly, from which, being pressed by the water, issues an unctuous, viscid, slippery, and mucilaginous matter, very proper to make the fish very glib to sail the readier through the water. Most fish have something analagous to this.” That any fish should secrete a lubricant, at once unctuous and viscid, for the purpose of accelerating its progress through the limpid element in which it lives, would be curious indeed were such a contradictory fact possible, but that Sir Hans Sloane should say so, when the most cursory acquaintance with his subject would have shown him the absurdity of such a statement, would be far stranger were it not for the evidence afforded by the Phil. Trans. of the wildest flights of imagination on the part of savants even down to comparatively recent times. But probably enough space has been given to ancient fables about the shark.

The whole family of the SqualidÆ, with the doubtful exceptions of the saw-fish (PristiophoridÆ) and the RaiidÆ, or skates, are scavengers, eaters of offal. As such their functions, though humble, are exceedingly useful and important; for although the myriads of Crustacea are scavengers pure and simple, their united efforts would be ineffectual to keep the ocean breadths free from the pollution of putrefying matter, since the vast majority of them dwell upon the bottom of comparatively shallow waters. Now when the body of some immense sea-monster, such as a whale, is bereft of life and rapidly rots, it usually floats. Then the office of the sharks is at once apparent. The only large fish that feeds upon garbage, they are possessed of an enormous appetite, as well as a digestive apparatus that would put to shame that of the ostrich, who is popularly credited with a liking for such dainties as nails and broken glass for hors d’oeuvres. The shark is ever hungry, and nothing, living or dead, comes amiss to his maw; but owing to the peculiar shape and position of his mouth it is only in rare instances that he is able to catch living prey, as, for instance, when the dog-fish of our coasts, a common species of shark hated by fishermen, gets among the nets enclosing a fine catch of herring or mackerel. Then the gluttonous rascal is in for a good time. Heedless of the flimsy barrier of twine, he gorges to bursting-point upon the impounded school, and usually concludes his banquet by tearing great gaps in the net, incidentally allowing the rest of the prisoners to escape. It is therefore hardly a matter for surprise that the despoiled and exasperated toilers of the sea, when they do succeed in capturing a dog-fish, should wreak summary vengeance upon him by such fantastic mutilation as their heated fancy suggests. They have also some curious ideas that the erratic antics performed by a blind, finless, and broken-jawed dog-fish will frighten away his congeners; and, as the shark is almost universally disdained as food, this practice of dismembering them and returning them alive to the sea, pour encourager les autres, seems to the fishermen an eminently satisfactory one. Unfortunately for their theory, the fact is, that supposing a sound and vigorous shark to meet with one of his kind incapable of flight or fight, the hapless flounderer would be promptly devoured by his relative, doubtless with the liveliest gratification. The shark has no scruples or preferences. Whatever he can get eatable (from his liberal point of view) he eats: of necessity, since he bears within him so fierce a craving for food that he will continue to devour even when disembowelled, until even his tremendous vitality yields to such a wound as that. Hence his bad name as a devourer of human flesh. An ordinary man in the water is, as a rule, the most defenceless of animals; and even a strong swimmer is apt to become paralysed with fear at the mere rumour of a shark being in his vicinity. If there be no shelter near, his nerveless limbs refuse their office, he floats or sinks with hardly a struggle, and the ravenous squalus finds in him not only an easy prey, but no doubt a most savoury morsel. This is no reason for suggesting that the shark prefers the flesh of homo sapiens to all other provender. As I have already said, his tastes are eclectic. Nay, it is highly doubtful whether he has any sense of taste at all. All experiences point to the contrary, for it is common knowledge that sharks will gobble up anything thrown overboard from a ship, from a corpse swathed in canvas to a lump of coal. This omnivorousness has been noticed in an able article published in Chambers’s Journal many years ago, the writer putting forward as a plausible reason for it the number of parasites that infest the stomachs of these fish. In this, however, they are by no means singular, all fish harbouring a goodly number of these self-invited boarders, the shark certainly entertaining no more than the average.

The presence of any large quantity of easily obtainable food is always sufficient to secure the undivided attention of the shark tribe. When “cutting in,” whales at sea I have often been amazed at the incredible numbers of these creatures that gather in a short space of time, attracted by some mysterious means from heaven only knows what remote distances. It has often occurred to us, when whaling in the neighbourhood of New Zealand, to get a sperm whale alongside without a sign of a shark below or a bird above. Within an hour from the time of our securing the vast mass of flesh to the ship the whole area within at least an acre has been alive with a seething multitude of sharks, while from every airt came drifting silently an incalculable host of sea-birds, converting the blue surface of the sea into the semblance of a plain of new-fallen snow. The body of a whale before an incision is made in the blubber presents a smooth rounded surface, almost as hard as india-rubber, with apparently no spot where any daring eater could find tooth-hold. But, oblivious of all else save that internal anguish of desire, the ravening sea-wolves silently writhed in the density of their hordes for a place at the bounteous feast. Occasionally one pre-eminent among his fellows for enterprise would actually set his lower jaw against the black roundness of the mighty carcass, and, with a steady sinuous thrust of his lithe tail, gouge out therefrom a mass of a hundredweight or so. If he managed to get away with it, the space left presented a curious corrugated hollow, where the serrated triangular teeth had worried their way through the tenacious substance, telling plainly what vigorous force must have been behind them. But it was seldom that we permitted such premature toll to be taken of our spoil. The harpooners and officers from their lofty position on the cutting stage slew scores upon scores by simply dropping their keen-edged blubber spades upon the soft crowns of the struggling fish, the only place where a shark is vulnerable to instant death. The weapon sinks into the creature’s brain, he gives a convulsive writhe or two, releases his hold and slowly sinks, followed in his descent by a knot of his immediate neighbours, all anxious to provide him with prompt sepulture within their own yearning maws.

At such a time as this the presence of a man in the water, right in the midst of the hungry host, passes unnoticed by them as long as he is upon the surface and in motion. Among the islands, while engaged in the “humpbacked” whale fishery, the natives were continually in and out of the water alongside where the sharks swarmed innumerable, but we never saw or heard of one being bitten. And some of those sharks were of the most enormous dimensions—approaching a length of thirty feet and of a bulk almost equal to one of our whale-boats. With that unerring instinct for spoil characteristic of the sharks, they begin to congregate in these seas almost contemporaneously with an attack upon a whale by whale-fishers. Now, one of the most frequent experiences in this perilous trade is that of a “stove” boat, necessitating a subsequent sojourn in the sea unprotected—sometimes for hours. Under such circumstances—and they have many times fallen to my share—I am free to confess that I have always had a curious feeling about my legs as if they were much too long, and whenever anything touched them a sympathetic thrill of apprehension would run up my spine; but my legs are still of the usual length. Nor did I ever hear of a man being attacked in the water at such times. In fact, it is an article of faith with whalemen that sharks have sufficient intelligence to know that the human hunters of the whale are busily providing a feast for them, and that therefore a truce is then rigidly observed between them; for, although the ravenous creatures cannot refrain from attempting to sample the blubber in situ, their opportunity arrives when the mountainous mass of reeking meat, stripped of its external coating of fat, is cut adrift from the ship’s side and allowed to float away. Then do they attack it in their thousands, and in an incredibly short time reduce it to a cleanly picked skeleton, for even their prowess is not equal to devouring the enormous framework of bone. But what they are capable of in the way of feeding may be judged from the fact that a humpbacked whale of about eighty tons in weight, which sank, after we had killed him, in about ten fathoms of water and which we were unable to raise for six hours for want of suitable gear, was so reduced in size by the time we lifted him to the surface again as not to be worth towing to the ship. In those latitudes, i.e. among the South Pacific Islands, are, I believe, to be found the largest sharks in the world, certainly the largest of those voracious kinds that so ably fill the office of sea-scavengers. Very large specimens of the basking shark, some nearly thirty feet long and of much greater girth than the ordinary ones, have been found in our own seas, but these unwieldy creatures are as harmless as whales, and quite as timid. There is a very circumstantial account in Nature of several years ago of a curious shark caught at Taboga Island, Gulf of Panama, by the crew of the Royal Italian corvette Vettor Pisani. When accurately measured it was found to be 8.9 metres long, and its greatest girth 6.5 metres. The mouth of this monster was at the point of its snout instead of beneath it, but the teeth were rudimentary and covered with membrane. So harmless was it that it afforded harbourage within its mouth to several Remora, a curious hanger-on of the shark family, of whom more presently. Dr. GÜnther classifies this very queer fish as Rhinodon typicus. Sharks of the size I have mentioned as abounding in the South Pacific have often seven rows of teeth ranked behind each other. Only the first row were erect, the others lay flat as if ready to replace a sudden loss of those in use. But, after watching their operations upon pieces of “kreng,” I am bound to say that swallowing a man whole, even by the largest of them, appears to me an utterly impossible feat.

Another peculiarity of the shark is that their colossal bodies are built upon a framework of cartilage, not bone. This may possibly account for their complete recovery from the most fundamental injuries. I once caught an eight-feet-long shark in the North Atlantic whose appearance suggested nothing out of the common. But, having a desire to make one of those useless articles dear to sailors, a walking-stick of a shark’s backbone, I went to the trouble of extracting the spine. I found to my amazement that in the middle of it there was not only a solid mass of bone of over a foot long, but it was at this place quite double the normal thickness. Further investigation revealed the fact that at some period of his career this creature had been transfixed by a harpoon which had torn out, nearly severing his body in two halves. Several of the ribs were re-knit and thickened in the same way. This splendid recuperative power renders the shark almost invulnerable, except, as before noticed, to a direct severing of the brain, or such a radical dismemberment as lopping off the tail.

Slothfulness is a distinctive feature of all the sharks. They are able to put on a spurt at times, but want of energy characterises them all. This habit reaches its climax in the Remora, to which allusion has already been made. As if in pursuance of a widely held opinion that lazy people are the most prolific inventors, this small squalus has evolved an arrangement on the top of his head whereby he can attach himself to any floating body and be carried along without effort on his part. All the functions are easily performed during attachment, and nothing short of doing damage to the fish will dislodge him. It is fairly well known that the Chinese and East African folk have utilised the Remora for catching turtle in a most ingenious way. More energetic than any other sharks are the saw-fish, whose snouts are prolonged into a broad blade of cartilage, which is horizontal when the fish is swimming in a normal position, and has both its edges set with slightly curved teeth about an inch apart. The end of this formidable-looking weapon is blunt and comparatively soft, so that it is quite incapable of the feats popularly attributed to it of piercing whales’ bodies, ships’ timbers, etc. It attacks other fish by a swift lateral thrust of the saw beneath them, the keen edge disembowelling them. Then it feeds upon the soft entrails, which are apparently the only food it can eat, from the peculiar shape of its mouth. It has an enormous number of small teeth, sometimes as many as fifty rows in one individual, but they are evidently unfit for the rough duties required of teeth by the garbage-eating members of the family.

Another peculiarity which differentiates the SqualidÆ from all other fish, and would seem to link them with the mammalia, is the way in which they produce their young. But here arise such diversities as to puzzle the student greatly; for some sharks are viviparous, bearing fifteen sharklets at once, that play about the mother in the liveliest manner, and are cared for by her with the utmost solicitude. At the approach of danger they all rush to the parent and hurry down her throat, hiding in some snug chamber till their alarm has subsided, when they emerge again and immediately recommence their gambols. The pretty little blue and gold Caranx (pilot-fish) that is so faithful a friend and companion to the shark also hides at times in the same capacious retreat. That this is a fact cannot be disputed, since sharks have often been caught and cut open, and the lively prisoners taken from within. Upon several occasions I have witnessed this, and I once kept a family of a dozen for over a week in a tub of water, feeding them on scraps, until some busybody gave them to the cat and made her very unwell. I have also seen the young ones and the pilot left behind when a shark has been caught, their frantic leapings upward at their departing protector being quite a moving sight. Other sharks are ovoviviparous, laying eggs over the hatching of which they watch and afterwards care for the young as tenderly as do the others. Another species pack their eggs in a sort of pouch as the skates do. This envelope contains all the nourishment necessary to the well-being of the young until they are able to provide for themselves, but the parent has no further concern with them. As instances of the intelligence of the shark many well-authenticated stories might be told did space permit, but two must suffice. While lying in the harbour of Tamatave every device we could conceive was put in practice in order to catch some of the sharks with which those waters abounded, but none were successful, for they carefully avoided all bait attached to lines strong enough to hold them. And the well-known habit of the “thresher” shark (Alopecias vulpes), of hunting with the killer-whale (Orca gladiator), assisting these furies to destroy a whale and afterwards amicably dividing the spoil with them, has been enlarged upon many times. Its absolute certainty does not admit of a doubt.