tance.

The weaker fishes, therefore, have no means to escape their tyranny, but by darting into the shallows. The Seal has been seen to pursue a mullet, which is a swift swimmer, and to turn it to and fro, in deep water, as a hound does a hare on land. The mullet has been seen trying every art of evasion, and at last swimming into shallow water, in hopes of escaping. There, however, the Seal followed; so that the little animal had no other way left to escape, but to throw itself on one side, by which means it darted into shoaler water than it could have swam in with the belly undermost; and thus at last it got free.

As they are thus the tyrants of the element in which they chiefly reside, so they are not very fearful, even upon land, except on those shores which are thickly inhabited, and from whence they have been frequently pursued. Along the desert coasts, where they are seldom interrupted by man, they seem to be very bold and courageous; if attacked with stones, like dogs they bite such as are thrown against them; if encountered more closely, they make a desperate resistance, and, while they have any life, attempt to annoy their enemy. Some have been known, even while they were skinning, to turn round and seize their butchers; but they are generally dispatched by a stunning blow on the nose. They usually sleep soundly, where not frequently disturbed; and that is the time when

the hunters surprize them. 'The Europeans, who go into the Greenland seas upon the whale fishery, surround them with nets, and knock them on the head; but the Greenlanders, who are unprovided with so expensive an apparatus, destroy them in a different manner. One of these little men paddles away in his boat, and when he sees a Seal asleep on the side of a rock, darts his lance, and that with such unerring aim, that he never fails to bury its point in the ani. mal's side. The Seal, feeling itself wounded, instantly plunges from the top of the rock, lance and all, into the sea, and dives to the bottom; but the lance has a bladder tied to one end, which keeps buoyant, and resists the animal's descent; so that, every time the Seal rises to the top of the water, the Greenlander strikes it with his oar, until he at last dispatches it. But, in our climate, the Seals are much more wary, and seldom suffer the hunter to come near them. They are often seen upon the rocks of the Cornish coast, basking in the sun, or upon the inaccessible cliffs, left dry by the tide. There they continue, extremely watchful, and never sleep long without moving; seldom longer than a minute; for then they raise their heads, and if they see no danger, they lie down again, raising and reclining their heads alternately, at intervals of about a minute each. The only method, therefore, that can be taken, is to shoot them if they chance to escape, they hasten towards the deep, fling

ing stones and dirt behind them, as they scramble along, and at the same time expressing their pain or their fears, by the most distressful cry; if they happen to be overtaken, they make a vi gorous resistance, with their feet and teeth, till they are killed.

The Seal is taken for the sake of its skin, and for the oil its fat yields; the former sells for about four shillings, and when dressed is very useful in covering trunks, making waistcoats, shot-pouches, and several other conveniencies.

THE SHARK.

Of all the inhabitants of the deep, those of the Shark kind are the fiercest and the most voracious. The smallest of this tribe is not less dreaded by greater fish, than many that to appearance seem more powerful; nor do any of them seem fearful of attacking animals far above their size; but the Great White Shark, which is the largest of the kind, joins to the most amazing rapidity, the strongest appetites for mischief: as he approaches nearly in size to the whale, he far surpasses him in strength and celerity, in the formidable arrangement of his teeth, and his insatiable desire of plunder.

Some assert that they have seen them of four thousand pounds weight; and we are told par

But

ticularly 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 apais enormously wide, as is the throat ble of swallowing a man great ease. its furniture of th is still more terrible; of these there are six rows, extremely hard, sharppointed, and of a wedge-like figure. It is asserted that there are seventy-two in each jaw, which make one hundred and forty-four in the whole. With these the jaws, both above and below, appear planted all over; but the animal has a 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, that 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.

As the Shark is thus formidable in his appearance, so is he also dreadful from his courage and activity. No fish can swim so fast as he

none is so constantly employed in swimming; he outstrips the swiftest ships, plays round them, tarts out before them, returns, seems to gaze at the P to exhibit fts, and all the while does not seem blast symptom of an effort to proceed. Such amazing powers, with such great appetite 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 its 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 expeotation 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,