Plutarch bears testimony to the tenderness of sharks for their offspring. He says:—‘In paternal fondness, in suavity and amiability of disposition, the shark is not surpassed by any living creature. The female brings forth young, not perfect, but inclosed each in a pouch, and watches over these till the brood is excluded with the anxiety as it were of a second birth. After this both parents vie with each other in procuring food, and teaching their offspring to frolick and swim; and should danger threaten the defenseless little ones, they find in the open mouth of their affectionate progenitors a sure asylum;’ ‘from which,’ says Oppian, who relates the same story with variations, ‘they issue forth when the alarm is over and the waters again safe.’ Notwithstanding these short paroxysms of tenderness, taken as a class, it may be safely asserted that nothing in nature is more savage than the whole Dog-fish tribe, the only difficulty being to determine precisely to which of the several species the bad pre-eminence belongs; whether to the White, the Blue or Basking Shark, the Canesca, the Zygæna, the Rough-hound or Bounce, &c., for they are _all_ Red Republicans of the deep; strife is their element, blood their delight, cruelty their pastime. Even the soft sex, which amongst most creatures deserves this winning epithet, in the Squalidæ is so far from being a recommendation, that the females are more ferocious than the males. A Messalina sharkess has been known to dash into a crowd of unhappy bathers, tearing and butchering all one after another, nor, till wearied out and gorged, but still unsated with her victims, leave the spot Et lassata viris, nondum satiata, recessit. Well, indeed, do these “fell, unhappie, and shrewd monsters,” as Pliny calls them, deserve the ill names bestowed by man—Lamia the fury, witch or hobgoblin; Anthropophagus, or man-eater, and Requin; so called, in anticipation of the requiems which may certainly be offered up by friends for the soul of any one whose body comes in the way of a shark.