The Bridgeport times and evening farmer., 1920-01-31
SCARCE;
 TRY TO OBTAIN
 HIDES FROM SEA
GOLDEN AGE.


 scarcity Of shoe leather has turned the attention of leather men to the creatures that inhabit the sea; and this great source of supply is now be- coming available, through the forma- ton of companies that will fish foc sea animals heretofore neglected.
 The porpoise has for some time supplied an excellent quality of shoe strings; but now skins of the white whale are being used in England for betting and shoe feathers, and the hides of sharks and other great crea- lures of the sea are being used here for similar purposes.
 Sharks weigh as high as a ton apiece; and not only are their skins salable, but the flesh is good for food and shark meat is now on sale in many cities of the Atlantic seaboard. The Government has furnished many recipes which have shark meat as the piece de resistance.
 If they could catch a few fish like that deep-sea monster caught off Mi ami six or eight years ago, what a lot of leather they would get! The fish in question was forty-five feet long, weighed fifteen tons, and had in it's stomach at the time it was caught q blackfsh weighing 1900 pounds, an- other fish, an octopus! weighing, 400 pounds, and 500 pounds of rock which it had swallowed, probably to help it's digestive apparatus.
 This fsh'S habitat is at 1900 to B. 900 feet below sea level, and the spec imen caught at Miami by Captain Thomas is one of the very few that have ever come to the surface. Its skin is three to four inches thick, and its cartridges in lieu of bones all indi- cate the enormous weight of water 1t was built to withstand. It had no fins, but flukes like a walrus and in it's death throes, after having with stood a rain of bullets and harpoons for thirty-nine hours, it smashed with a blow the propeller and stern of the steam yacht that had come out to tow it in to shore. It took nineteen barrels of formaldehyde to disinfect the carcass and prepare it for exhi- bition.
 This great fish has a mouth forty two inches long and thirty-six inches wide, easily sufficient to swallow a horse at a gulp.
 Its carcass was on exhibition at Pittsburgh in the summer of 1919, and at Nashville, Tenn, in Novem- Der, 1919, and has been shown in other American cities. It is supposed 10 nave Deen dr1Ven to the surface by some seismic shock, as it seemed to be in 9 dazed condition at the time it was found and killed.
 Scientists calculate that this is a young specimen, probably about 500 years old.
 The smart alecks, who have had So many sarcastic things to say respect ing, our Lords statement that, "As Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the ketos, huge, gaping fish, SO shall the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth" Matthew 12:40, because they claim a "whale's'' throat is not large enough to swallow a man, have not had so much to say since this fish was brought to shore.
 It may have been the very father or grandfafh fher of this fish that swal- lowed Jonah; but it is far more likely that there are millions of them be- meath the oceans waves, and that the bodies of myriads of human beings that have been drowned have found their way into their cavernous maws.
 Anyway, here is a fish big enough to swallow twenty Jonahs and to pro- vide leather enough to shoe a small sized army.