gieat numbers of a rod coloured perch, from six inches to a
foot in length, of rhost excellent flavour, which, with time
Epicurean want of feeling, we had the cruelty to drop living
off the hook into the boiling springs, where it required just
fifteen minutes to cook them in perfection. Whether it was
owing to the novelty of the mode of preparation, or to long
abstinence from good fish, or to the real intrinsic excellence
of this species of perch, I am not able to decide, but the repast
was universally pronounced to be delicious. We caught
here also another species of perch in great abundance, which
in my opinion was still superior to the red one. It measured
from three to four feet in length, the back fin undivided, and
the body marked with three brown and three white alternate
longitudinal stripes. The quantity of cray-fish that were
crawling on the bar of the entrance into the crater, at low
water, is incredible; and their voracity for dead carcases was
so great, that if a seal, plenty of which were lying on the
causeways, was thrown in, they swarmed to it in such multitudes
that a boat load might be picked up by the hand in a
very short space of time. Nor were these marine insects less
plentiful in the open sea where the ships were lying at anchor.
Baskets let down into the sea, with morsels of bacon within
them, or pieces of shark’s flesh, were immediately drawn up
again full of cray-fish. These and the large perch, rock-cod,
and bream, were caught in such abundance that, I believe,
a provision of fish for six days was laid in for the two ships’
companies, consisting nearly of six hundred men. A whole
shark, near eleven feet in length, was cut up as bait for crayfish.
Four young sharks were found alive in the stomach of
this voracious animal; but whether they had been devoured
7
by the old one, or had voluntarily fled thither for protection,
was a contested point among our medical gentlemen. One
declared that he had more than once seen their own young
egorged from the stomach of the old ones when taken; and that
once in particular he had observed a dozen Saw fish (a species
of shark, the Squalus Pristis) springing alive out of the
mother’s mouth, after it had been hoisted out of the sea upon
the deck of the ship. Doctor Moseley, who has written on
the subject and ought to be considered as good authority, has
observed that the young sharks always retreat into the stomach
of the old ones in time of danger; an observation, indeed,
that was made two centuries before his time. Sir
Richard Hawkins, who sailed on a voyage to South America
in the year 1593, expressly says that he has frequently seen
young sharks go into, and out of, the mouth of the dam,
and that he has found them in the stomach; so that Linnaeus
is probably mistaken in supposing that this fish devours its
own young. John Hunter decidedly proved that the Jiving
principle, in particular classes of land animals, is endued with
the power of resisting the action of the gastric juice; but
the difficulty of making experiments on the digestive faculties
of the stomachs of fishes leaves it undetermined whether the
same principle is capable of exerting a greater or less degree
of power in this class of animals. The nature indeed of digestion,
with all the experiments of Hunter and Spallanzani,
seems to be yet but imperfectly understood; but facts Jiave
sufficiently proved that it is exceedingly different in different
animals. The shark gulps indiscriminately into its voracious
maw the bones and shells of animals, large iron hooks, tarred
ropes, and the clothing of such human creatures as unfortunately