The Cordova daily times., 1920-08-27
OPEN SEASON0F
 MAN-EATERS IS
 NOW AT HAND

the "open season. for sharks ap- breaches, South American liners ar irving in New York report the sight ing of these monsters, fact which lends interest to the following commu- nication to the National Geographic Society by Dr. Hugh M. Smith, emi- nent authority on fish:
 When great fish are mentioned most people will at once think of the shark, among which, indeed, are found the largest fish now existing" writes Dr. Smith. "Of the many species of the sharks noteworthy on account of their size there are about half a dozen which are pre-eminent. These differ much in their disposition, some being as harmless as doves and others the incarnation of ferocity.
 "The sleeper shark (comniosus mi crocephalus). whose scientific name fits so admirably, appears to have de- veloped it's body at the expense of it's brain, for it is a sluggish, stupid glut- ton, about six times as long as an average man. At home in the Arctic regions, it sometimes visits as far south as Cape Cod, British Isles and Oregon. It is most often observed lying quietly on the surface, apparent ly dozing and easily approached, but at times, when hungry, it rouses it. self and fiercely attacks whales, bit ing huge pieces out of their sides and tails, and when feeding on the car cass of a whale which has been killed by hunters it is so voracious that it permits spears and knives to be thrust into it without seeming to take any notice.
 One of the most prodigious and perhaps the most formidable of the sharks is the man eater (carcharo- don carcharias). It roams through all temperate and tropical seas and-every- where is an object of dread. It's max imum length is 40 feet and it's teeth are three inches long, While there are few authentic instances of sharks at tacking human beings (prior to the recent tragedies), there have un- doubtedly been many cases where sharks simply swallowed people who had fallen overheard, just as they would swallow any other food. How easy it would be for a man-eater to devour a person whole may be judged 1 from the finding of an entire 106- pound sealion in the stomach of a 3O- | foot shark on the Calaifornian coast "A man-eater 36h feet long had jaws 20 inches wide, inside measure, and teeth 21a inches long, This may have been the great fish of the 1 scripture narrative, and it is possible 1 that at that time much larger man. eaters existed than are now known, 1 as shark teeth with cutting edges five inches long have been found on 1 the sea-bottom, and these are believed | by naturalists to have belonged to sharks not long dead. The phosphate beds of South Carolina yield very | large fossil teeth of sharks which are related to the man-eater of the pres ent day-judging from the compara- tive size of these teeth Professor Goode thought that sharks 70 and 80 l feet long must have been common.
 Many years ago a Norwegian bish- op in learned paper brought to the attention of the scientific and theo- | logical world a shark which he at tempted to prove must have been the great fish that swallowed Jonah This was the basking shark (cetorhi nu maximus), known also as the ele- phant or bone shark, which is an in- habitant of the polar seas, but Oc- casionally strays as far south as Vir- ginia or California, and in former years was not very rare in the United States and British coasts. The species has the habit at times of collecting in schools at the surface and basking in the sun with it's back partly out of water
 Tt reaches a maximum length of 90