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Sharks (With the allied rays)

with the allied rays, are the chief game of the travelling angler when fishing over the side of the ship in port, as their scavenging habits make foreign harbours attractive to them. Enormous stingrays may be hooked, though not always caught, in some of the Australian harbours. The writer hooked a stingray one moonlight night off Adelaide, which must have weighed 500 lb., and, after a struggle lasting for some time, brought it helpless to the surface, when the ship's butcher, anxious to help, but uncertain in the deceptive light, cut through the line. Numbers of sharks, many of them with living young inside them, are caught when fishing for the Australian schnapper, and they are very troublesome in Cape waters. Care should be taken in handling these fish to remove the hook, not only to avoid the teeth, an obvious precaution, but also the sharp spines, which some carry in front of the back fins, and the rough skin, which, winding round the captor's wrist, as the smaller kinds invariably do, may easily cause painful abrasion. It is remarkable, considering their enormous size and strength, how easily the majority of sharks are killed, and this, in addition to their sluggish manner of fighting, makes them the reverse of game. It has already been pointed out that a sharp blow on the point of the snout is sufficient to give its quietus to the largest. They even die of suffocation in a net far sooner than any other fish of the size. While tuna-fishing in Cape Breton, the writer had a fragile net set for gaspereau or other bait, and in this. on the last morning of his stay, he found a shark measuring 8 ft. and weighing certainly 400 lb. It is true that, owing to a gale, the net had not been hauled for fortyeight hours, yet it seemed remarkable to find so great a fish suffocated by so weak a net. Yet this low vitality is apparently characteristic of these dreaded fishes all the VOL. IV world over, though, on the other hand, anyone ignorant of the most vulnerable spot may find them difficult to kill.

F. G. AFLALO.

SHARK. - MEASUREMENTS, &C. - This shark is largest in circumference about the situation of the pectoral fins, diminishing in size towards each extremity. Head conical.

The snout (especially in the young) appears like a beaked projection, being of much less circumference than the anterior end of the jaws; it is also covered with small pores.

Eye-small, situated over the anterior end of the mouth: nostrils situated at the edge of the upper lip. Spiracle small, and situated midway between the eye and the first gill-opening. Teeth small and conical, with smooth edges, and in from four to six rows. Gill-openings very long, extending down the entire side of the neck.

Fins-the first dorsal is of medium size: it commences on a line just posterior to the insertion of the pectoral, is highest in front and concave along its upper border. The second dorsal, which is about one-third the size of the first, is inserted just anterior to the anal, than which it is larger. Pectoral placed low down, rather small and nearly triangular. Caudal, with the lower lobe the longer and the upper notched, a pit at the root of the fin. Skin rough, especially when the hand is passed from behind forwards; a keel along the side of the tail. Colours-dusky black, brown, or blue along the back, becoming lighter on the sides and beneath. Snout of a dull reddish, becoming dull white beneath. (Day's Fishes of Great Britain and Ireland.) an