It was my intention to prepare that useless and
unornamental article so dear to sailors--a walking-stick made of
a shark's backbone. But when I came to cut out the vertebra, I
noticed a large scar, extending from one side to the other, right
across the centre of the back. Beneath it the backbone was
thickened to treble its normal size, and perfectly rigid; in
fact, it had become a mass of solid bone. At some time or other
this shark had been harpooned so severely that, in wrenching
himself free, he must have nearly torn his body in two halves,
severing the spinal column completely. Yet such a wound as that
had been healed by natural process, the bone knit together again
with many times the strength it had before--minus, of course, its
flexibility--and I can testify from the experience of securing
him that he could not possibly have been more vigorous than he
was.
A favourite practice used to be--I trust it is so no longer--to
catch a shark, and, after driving a sharpened stake down through
his upper jaw and out underneath the lower one, so that its upper
portion pointed diagonally forward, to let him go again. The
consequence of this cruelty would be that the fish was unable to
open his mouth, or go in any direction without immediately coming
to the surface.
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