all, however, the manner of gestation is nearly the same; for upon dissection, it is ever found, that the young, while in the body, continue in the egg till a very little time before they are excluded: these eggs, they may properly be said to hatch within their body; and as soon as their young quit the shell, they begin to quit the womb also.

THE SHARK.

Or all the inhabitants of the deep those of the Shark kind are the fiercest and most voracious.

Is sometimes seen to rank even among the whales for magnitude; and is found from twenty to thirty feet long. Some assert that they have seen them of four thousand pounds weight; and we are told particularly of one, that had a human corpse in his belly. The head is large, and somewhat flatted; the snout long, and the eyes large. The mouth is enormously wide, as is the throat, and capable of swallowing a man with great ease. But its furniture of teeth is still more terrible. Of these there are six rows extremely hard, sharp pointed, and of a wedgelike fig

ure. It is asserted that there are seventy-two in each jaw, which make one hundred and forty-four in the whole; yet others think that their number is uncertain; and that, in proportion as the animal grows older, these terrible instruments of destruction are found to increase. With these the jaws both above and below appear planted all over: but the animal has the power of erecting or depressing them at pleasure. When the Shark is at rest, they lie quite flat in his mouth; but when he prepares to seize his prey, he erects all this dreadful apparatus, by the help of a set of muscles that join them to the jaw; and the animal he seizes, dies, pierced with a hundred wounds, in a moment.

Nor is this fish less terrible to behold as to the rest of his form: his fins are larger, in proportion; he is furnished with great goggle eyes, which he turns with ease on every side, so as to see his prey behind him as well as before ; and his whole aspect is marked with a character of malignity: his skin also is rough, hard, and prickly; being that substance which covers instrument cases, called shagreen.

No fish can swim so fast as the Shark; he outstrips the swiftest ships. Such amazing powers, with such great appetites for destruction, would quickly unpeople even the ocean; but providentially the Shark's upper jaw projects so far above the lower, that he is obliged to turn on one side (not on his back, as is generally supposed) to seize his prey. As this takes some small time to perform, the animal pursued seizes that opportunity to make his escape.

Still, however, the depredations he commits are frequent and formidable. The Shark is the dread of sailors in all hot climates; where, like a greedy robber, he attends the ships, in expectation of what may drop overboard. A man who unfortunately falls into the sea at such a time is sure to perish. A sailor that was bathing in the Mediterranean, near Antibes, in the year 1744, while he was swimming

about fifty yards from the ship, perceived a monstrous fish making towards him and surveying him on every side, as fish are often seen to look round a bait. The poor man, struck with terror at its approach, cried out to his companions in the vessel to take him on board. They accordingly threw him a rope with the utmost expedition, and were drawing him up by the ship's side, when the Shark darted after him from the deep, and snapped off his leg.

Mr. Pennant tells us, that the master of a Guinea ship, finding a rage for suicide prevail among his slaves, from a notion the unhappy creatures had, that after death they should be restored again to their families, friends, and country; to convince them at least that some disgrace must attend them here, he ordered one of their dead bodies to be tied by the heels to a rope, and so let down into the sea; and though it was drawn up again with great swiftness, yet, in that short space, the Shark had bitten off all but the feet. A Guinea captain was, by

stress of weather, driven into the harbour of Belfast, with a lading of very sickly slaves, who, in the manner abovementioned, took every opportunity to throw themselves overboard when brought upon deck, as is usual, for the benefit of the fresh air. The brutal captain perceiving, among others, a woman slave attempting to drown herself, pitched upon her as an example to the rest. As he supposed that they did not know the terrors attending death, he ordered the woman to be tied with a rope under the armpits, and to let her down into the water When the poor creature was thus plunged in, and about half way down, she was heard to give a terrible shriek, which at first was ascribed to her fears of drowning; but soon after, the water appearing red all round her, she was drawn up, and it was found that a Shark, which had followed the ship, had bit her off from the middle.

The usual method by which sailors take the shark, is by baiting a great hook with a piece of beef or pork, which is thrown out into the sea, by a strong cord, strengthened near the hook with an iron chain. Without this precaution, the Shark would quickly bite the cord in two, and thus set himself free. It is no unpleasant amusement to observe this voracious animal coming up to survey the bait, particularly when not pressed by hunger. He approaches it, examines it, swims round it, seems for a while to neglect it, perhaps apprehensive of the cord and chain he quits it for a little; but, his appetite pressing, he returns again; appears preparing to devour it, but quits it once more. When the sailors have sufficiently diverted themselves with his different evolutions, they then make a pretence, by drawing the rope, as if intending to take the bait away; it is then that the glutton.'s hunger excites him; he darts at the bait, and swallows it, hook and all. Sometimes, however, he does not so entirely gorge the whole,

but that he once more gets free; yet even then, though wounded and bleeding with the hook, he will again pursue

the bait until he is taken. When he finds the hook lodged in his maw, his utmost efforts are then excited, but in vain, to get free: he tries with his teeth to cut the chain; he pulls with all his force to break the line; he almost seems to turn his stomach inside out, to disgorge the hook: in this manner he continues his formidable though fruitless efforts; till, quite spent, he suffers his head to be drawn above water, and the sailors, confining his tail by a noose, in this manner draw him on shipboard, and despatch him. This is done by beating him on the head till he dies: yet even that is not effected without difficulty and danger; the enormous creature, terrible even in the agonies of death, still struggles with his destroyers; nor is there an animal in the world that is harder to be killed. Even when cut in pieces, the inuscles still preserve their motion, and vibrate for some minutes after being separated from the body. Another method of taking him, is by striking a barbed instrument, called a fizgig, into his body, as he brushes along by the side of the ship. As soon as he is taken up, to prevent his flouncing, they cut off the tail with an axe, with the utmost expedition.

This is the manner in which Europeans destroy the Shark; but some of the negroes along the African coast take a bolder and more dangerous method to combat their terrible enemy. Armed with nothing more than a knife, the negro plunges into the water, where he sees the Shark watching for his prey, and boldly swims forward to meet him. Though the great animal does not come to provoke the combat, he does not avoid it, and suffers the man to approach him; but, just as he turns upon his side to seize the aggressor, the negro watches the opportunity, plunges his knife into the fish's belly, and pursues his blows with such