The Savannah morning news., 1904-10-16


men OF Central America couldn't be
hired to go into the waters of their
coasts. When building RATS on log
wood 10 tow TO a ship. they are
perpetually on the qui vlve for the
cry shark" and scramble away from
the edge of the logs in a mighty hur-
Try.
The Alden Photograph.
The diving boys of Alden have been
used many times as proofs that sharks
don't bite man. Alden is a menagerie
of sharks. Yet the negro and Arab
boys there paddle out and dive with
apparent disregard of them But there
is famous photograph which proves
that the Alden shark bites and eats
boys just the same.
This photograph was taken by an
Englishman. Mr.. Linford in the sum
mer of 1901. He had just taken a pho
tograph of diving boy. and was
ready TO snap a second picture. when
somebody threw a coin and boy
went into the sea head first after il.
lie came to the surface and the shut
ter was snapped. 1t was not until the
PHOTOGRAPHER had pressed the button
that he himself saw what had hap
pened in that moment shark had
broken water. seized the boy and pull
ed him under in that very instant. The
picture shows one arm of the boy pro-
truding from the sea. A great splash
of white froth around II shows where
the shark is turning to so down with
his prey.
Most IF the false notions about
sharks arise from the fact that OBJ
servers. of the sharks of temperate
climates 10 not realize that the great
fish of the tropics and semi-tropics are
entirely different i'm temperament from
those of the cooler northern waters.
The northern sharks rarely attack
human beings. They are mostly of
such more or less harmless varieties as
sand sharks. which are scavenging
bottom feeders, as sluggish as they
are cowardly. The tiger leopard, blue.
white. basking, and other great sharks
do not cross the Gulf Stream If they
can help it,
Lots of Different Sharks.
Most people suppose that shark"
means a particular single variety of
fish. In truth, there are so many
different kinds OF sharks that even an
| expert ichthyologist will hesitate to
| try to name all and would rather re-
fer the questioner to shark expert
There are more than twenty differ
ent kinds of toothless dog sharks
| alone. More than fifty kinds Of deem
!
| the deep sea dredges that have CROPPED
in the eternal darkness of the deepest
| seas. They have brought UP mnil-
| ture sharks. measuring little more
! than a foot, though they were fully
! grown, adult fish. They dwell deep
! in the thousand fathom abyss.
! Against these tiny sharks, are sharks
| that will measure thirty feet and
more, with a mouth huge enough to
! swallow a man and never know 1t.
The greatest monsters are those i'm
the Japan seas. japanese lore is full
of strange, horrifying tales of the
might and ferOcity of sharks that
| haunt and patrol certain coasts for
years as gruesome sentinels.
New Japanese Monster.
The list of the strange species OF
Japanese sharks is a big one already,
and every little while a new kind of
monster is brought in. Last year the
| museum in Toxic was enriched by a
giant, thirty feet long. 1t had a wom-
derful wrinkled head, and its great
| jaws were almost at the point of it's
snout instead of being far underneath,
as is the case with most other sharks
1t was gray, spotted and white and
striped white Vertically-altogether a
most singular form of shark On it's
back was bump that made it fully
four feet tall there. In it's stomach
was an oak post, three feet long 1t
has been acknowledged by the scien-
J tific world as "a brand new species
not on account OF the oak post.
In Hawaii the people recognize
various individual sharks just as land
men recognize cattle. Some of these
@harks are venerated as gods and
| others are feared as demons The
! latter, of course, are the sharks that
attack men. There are lots of them
The gods. on the other hand, are usu-
/ ally great lazy brutes of Sharks that
live i'm lagoons, where they feed them
selves so full of offal and fish that
they wouldn't bother to look at a
man even If he fell on top of them
Although Hawaii is getting "en-
| lightened" in such a hurry that it
! hates to mention such past peccadil-
| loes as cannibalism and shark wor-
| ship, there still are little temples on
the shores where the fishermen live,
| all dedicated to shark gods. And there