OCR Text |
Show II m oo II SHARKS OF GREAT II ' SIZE' ; Sharks, raiding the Atlantic sea- II , board, are described by Dr. Hugh M. Smith, an authority on fishes, In a bulletin just Issued by the government govern-ment "When giant fishes are mentioned most people will at onco think of the shark, among which, indeed, aro found tho largest fish now existing. Of the many species of sharks noteworthy note-worthy on account of their Blze there are about half a dozenwhich are preeminent. pre-eminent. These differ much in their disposition, some being as harmless as doves and others the incarnation of ferocity. "The sleeper shark appears to have developed Its body at the expense of its brain, for it is a sluggish, stupid glutton, about six times as long as an average man. At homo In the Arctic regions, It sometimes makes visits aB far south as Cape Cod, the British Isles, and Oregon. It Is most often observed lying quietly on the surface, apparently dozing and easily approached, ap-proached, but at times, when hungry. it rouses itself and fiercely auacits whales, biting huge pieces out of their sides and talis, and when feeding feed-ing on the carcass of a whale which has been killed by hunters, It Is so voracious that it permits spears and knives to be thrust Into it without seeming to take any notice. "One of tho most prodigious and perhaps the most formidable of sharks Is tho 'man-cater. It roams through all temperate and tropical seas and cvorywhoro is an object of dread. Its maximum length is 40 feet and its teeth are three inches long. While there are few authentic instances of sharks attacking human beings, there have undoubtedly been many cases where sharks simply swallowed "peoplo who had fallen overboard, ov-erboard, just as they would swallow any other food. How easy it would be for a man-eater to devour a person per-son whole may be judged from the finding of an entire hundred-pound sea-lion in the stomach of a 30-foot shark on the California coast. A certain man-eater 36 feet long had jaws 20 Inches wide, Inside measure, and teeth 2 1-2 inches, long. This may have been tho 'great fish' of the scripture narrative, and it is possible that at that time much larger man-eaters man-eaters existed than are now known, as shark teeth with cutting edgeB five inches long have been found on the sea-bottom and these are believed by naturalists to have belonged to sharks not long dead. The phosphate beds of South Carolina yield very large fossil teeth of a shark which was related to the man-eater of the present day, judging from the comparative com-parative size of these teeth. Professor Pro-fessor Goode thought that sharks 70 or SO feet long must have been common. com-mon. "Many years ago a Norwegian bishop, bish-op, in a learned paper, brought to the attention of tho scientific and theological theo-logical world a shark which he attempted at-tempted to prove must have been the 'great fish' that swallowed Jonah. This was the basking shark known also as the elephant or bone shark, which is an inhabitant of the polar seas, but occasionally strays as far south as Virginia and California, and in former years was not rare in the United States and British coasts. The I species has the habit at times of collecting in schools at the surface and basking In the sun with Its back partly out of water. It reaches a maximum length of 60 feet and Is exceeded ex-ceeded In size by only three or four animals extant. Provided with small te,cth, It feeds on fishes and floating crustaceans, and is not of a ferocious disposition. It Is dangerous only by virtue of Its great bulk and, when attacked, its powerful tall easily demolishes de-molishes small boats. In former years the basking shark was hunted for Its oil on the coast of Norway and Ireland; it was also harpooned on the shore of Massachusetts in the early part of the last century, and as many as 12 barrels of oil were sometimes obtained from the liver of one shark. There are many records of basking sharks 25 to 38 feet long from the coast of New York, Massachusetts, Massa-chusetts, and Maine, but the species has not been common in our waters In recent years. "The largest of all fishes, the largest larg-est of all cold-blooded animals, and the largest of all existing animals, with the exception of a few species of whales, Is the whale shark, originally orig-inally described from Good Hope, but now known from India, Japan, South America, Panama, California, and various va-rious other places, a small specimen having been obtained on the Florida coast a few years ago. This shark has a very broad and obtuse snout and an exceedingly wide mouth, armed arm-ed with numerous minute teeth; the dark-colored body is marked with many small whitish spots. The species spe-cies is stated to attain a length of 70 feet and Is known to exceed 50 feet. Notwithstanding its immense size, however, It Is harmless to man unless attacked, and feeds on the small creatures for which Its teeth are adapted. Its hugh bulk makes it dangerous in the some way that a whale its dangerous. Years ago it waB reported that the sperm-whale fishermen at the Island of Saint Denis, in the Indian ocean, dreaded to harpoon a whale shark by mistake, mis-take, and stories are told of a harpooned har-pooned fish, 'having by a lightning-like lightning-like dive exhausted the supply of rope which had been accidentally fastened to the boat, dived deeper still, and so pulled a pirogue and crew to the bottom.' " |