THE WAYS OF SNARKS.

King Country Chronicle, Volume VI, Issue 444, 2 March 1912, Page 6

THE WAYS OF SNARKS.

Where the story originated that a shark was obliged to turn on its side or back to take its food is hard to say. Like many other popular errors, it has been copied by one writer from another, most of whom probably never saw a shark, its origin being lost in the mists of antiquity. Many such legends are current : that of the hoop-snake ; the belief that if a person is bitten by a dog he will so mad when the dog do::s, no matter if it is years afterwards ; that the alligator can raise its upper jaw ; that the white-headed angle is a bald-lnadcd bird. Truth, it id said, lies at the bottom of a well, being too modest, perhaps, to appear among men. As to sharks tho writer has taken many of them, with hand-line and rod and reel ; the dusky shark, the shovel-nose, the hammer-head, and tho nurscshaix ; often in clear, shallow water where his movements could be seei#, and he has never seen one of the species turn over in taking the bait, but it was taken as other fishes take it. He has also seen large sharks, man-eaters, perhaps, taken at sea with hook and line, but they turned no somersaults till they got on deck. There is much resemblance between the shark and the wolf. Both are voracious, ferocious, and cowardly, seldom attacking any animal capable of resistance, except when they are very hungry, or when emboldened by numbers. Then they both become dangerous. An old fisherman on the coast of Florida, who had been in the habit of taking sharks for their oil, and had killed hundreds of them, told the writer that he thought a shark less dangerous than an alligator, by which animal he had been attacked more than once, but by a shark never. He had, however, found half of a good-sized alligator in the stomach of a shark, which shows the enormous power of the jaws oi that fish. The writer asked the old man if the shark was obliged to turn over to seize its prey. He said he had never seen it do so ; and as the shark lived mostly on fish, he could not capture his food in that way, but would starve to death if h{ had to turn over.