. Illustrated natural history : comprising descriptions of animals, birds, fishes, reptiles, insects, etc., with sketches of their peculiar habits and characteristics . Zoology. CARTILAQINOUS J ISHES. 349. Head of White Shark. The White Shark is a well-known scourge of the Medi- terranean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean. This is the creature so detested by sailors, who, when they have caught a " shirk," sub- ject it to every possible indignity. This voracious creature has been known to swallow an entire man, and as it is in the habit of lurking about ships for the sake of the scraps throw
. Illustrated natural history : comprising descriptions of animals, birds, fishes, reptiles, insects, etc., with sketches of their peculiar habits and characteristics . Zoology. CARTILAQINOUS J ISHES. 349. Head of White Shark. The White Shark is a well-known scourge of the Medi- terranean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean. This is the creature so detested by sailors, who, when they have caught a " shirk," sub- ject it to every possible indignity. This voracious creature has been known to swallow an entire man, and as it is in the habit of lurking about ships for the sake of the scraps thrown overboard, and almost invariably swallows whatever is cast over the side, the con- tents of its stomach are often of a most heterogeneous description. The sailors always amuse themselves by seeing what the shark had " stowed away," and the substances thus brought to light have been most curious. The entire contents of a lady's work-basket, down to the scissors, were found in the interior of one shark, and another had actually swal- lowed an entire bull's hideâa circumstance which led ,the operating sailor to remark that the shark had swallowed a bull, but could not â " digest" the hide. The amphibious South Sea Islanders stand in great dread of the Shark, and with good reason, for not a year elapses without several victims being offered to the rapacity of this terrific animal. Nearly thirty of the natives of the Society Islands were destroyed at one time by the sharks. A storm had so injured the canoe in which they were passing from one island to another, that they were forced to take refuge on a raft hastily formed of the fragments of their canoe. Their weight sunk the raft a foot or two below the surface of the water, and, dreadful to say, the sharks surrounded them and dragged them off the raft one by one, until the lightened raft rose above the water and preserved the few survivors. The Hammer-headed Shark inhabits the same latitudes. This curiously
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1800, bookdecade1880, booksubjectzoology, bookyear1883
