THE VOYAGE OF THE VETTOR PISANI.
Knowing how much Nature is read by all the naturalists of the world, I send these few lines, which I hope will be of some interest.
The Italian R.N. corvette Vettor Pisani left Italy in April, 1882, for a voyage round the world with the ordinary commission of a man-of-war. The Minister of Marine, wishing to obtain scientific results, gave orders to form, when possible, a marine zoological collection, and to carry on surveying, deep-sea soundings, and abyssal thermometrical measurements. The officers of the ship received their different scientific charges, and Prof. Dohrn, director of the Zoological Station at Naples, gave to the writer necessary instructions for collecting and preserving sea animals.
At the end of 1882 the Vettor Pisani visited the Straits of Magellan, the Patagonian Channels, and Chonos and Chiloe islands; we surveyed the Darwin Channel, and following Dr. Cuningham's work (who visited these places on board H.M.S. Nassau), we made a numerous collection of sea animals by dredging and fishing along the coasts.
While fishing for a big shark in the Gulf of Panama during the stay of our ship in Taboga Island, one day in February, with a dead clam, we saw several great sharks some miles from our anchorage. In a short time several boats with natives went to sea, accompanied by two of the Vettor Pisani's boats.
Having wounded one of these animals in the lateral part of the belly, we held him with lines fixed to the spears; he then began to describe a very narrow curve, and irritated by the cries of the people that were in the boats, ran off with a moderate velocity. To the first boat, which held the lines just mentioned, the other boats were fastened, and it was a rather strange emotion to feel ourselves towed by the monster for more than three hours with a velocity that proved to be two miles per hour. One of the boats was filled with water. At last the animal was tired by the great loss of blood, and the boats assembled to haul in the lines and tow the shark on shore.
With much difficulty the nine boats towed the animal alongside the Vettor Pisani to have him hoisted on board, but it was impossible on account of his colossal dimensions. But as it was high water we went toward a sand beach with the animal, and we had him safely stranded at night.
With much care were inspected the mouth, the nostrils, the ears, and all the body, but no parasite was found. The eyes were taken out and prepared for histological study. The set of teeth was all covered by a membrane that surrounded internally the lips; the teeth are very little, and almost in a rudimental state. The mouth, instead of opening in the inferior part of the head, as in common sharks, was at the extremity of the head; the jaws having the same bend.
Cutting the animal on one side of the backbone we met (1) a compact layer of white fat 20 centimeters deep; (2) the cartilaginous ribs covered with blood vessels; (3) a stratum of flabby, stringy, white muscle, 60 centimeters high, apparently in adipose degeneracy; (4) the stomach.
By each side of the backbone he had three chamferings, or flutings, that were distinguished by inflected interstices. The color of the back was brown with yellow spots that became close and small toward the head, so as to be like marble spots. The length of the shark was 8.90 m. from the mouth to the pinna caudalis extremity, the greatest circumference 6.50 m., and 2.50 m. the main diameter (the outline of the two projections is made for giving other dimensions).
The natives call the species Tintoreva, and the most aged of the village had only once before fished such an animal, but smaller. While the animal was on board we saw several Remora about a foot long drop from his mouth; it was proved that these fish lived fixed to the palate, and one of them was pulled off and kept in the zoological collection of the ship.
The Vettor Pisani has up the present visited Gibraltar, Cape Verde Islands, Pernambuco, Rio Janeiro, Monte Video, Valparaiso, many ports of Peru, Guayaquil, Panama, Galapagos Islands, and all the collections were up to this sent to the Zoological Station at Naples to be studied by the naturalists. By this time the ship left Callao for Honolulu, Manila, Hong Kong, and, as the Challenger had not crossed the Pacific Ocean in these directions, we made several soundings and deep-sea thermometrical measurements from Callao to Honolulu. Soundings are made with a steel wire (Thompson system) and a sounding-rod invented by J. Palumbo, captain of the ship. The thermometer employed is a Negretti and Zambra deep-sea thermometer, improved by Captain Maguaghi (director of the Italian R.N. Hydrographic Office).
With the thermometer wire has always been sent down a tow-net which opens and closes automatically, also invented by Captain Palumbo. This tow-net has brought up some little animals that I think are unknown.
G. CHIERCHIA.
Honolulu July 1.
The shark captured by the Vettor Pisani in the Gulf of Panama is Rhinodon typicus, probably the most gigantic fish in existence. Mr. Swinburne Ward, formerly commissioner of the Seychelles, has informed me that it attains to a length of 50 feet or more, which statement was afterward confirmed by Prof. E.P. Wright. Originally described by Sir A. Smith from a single specimen which was killed in the neighborhood of Cape Town, this species proved to be of not uncommon occurrence in the Seychelles Archipelago, where it is known by the name of "Chagrin." Quite recently Mr. Haly reported the capture of a specimen on the coast of Ceylon. Like other large sharks (Carcharodon rondeletii, Selache maxima, etc.), Rhinodon has a wide geographical range, and the fact of its occurrence on the Pacific coast of America, previously indicated by two sources, appears now to be fully established. T. Gill in 1865 described a large shark known in the Gulf of California by the name of "Tiburon ballenas" or whale-shark, as a distinct genus—Micristodus punctatus—which, in my opinion, is the same fish. And finally, Prof. W. Nation examined in 1878 a specimen captured at Callao. Of this specimen we possess in the British Museum a portion of the dental plate. The teeth differ in no respect from those of a Seychelles Chagrin; they are conical, sharply pointed, recurved, with the base of attachment swollen. Making no more than due allowance for such variations in the descriptions by different observers as are unavoidable in accounts of huge creatures examined by some in a fresh, by others in a preserved, state, we find the principal characteristics identical in all these accounts, viz.: the form of the body, head, and snout, relative measurements, position of mouth, nostrils, and eyes, dentition, peculiar ridges on the side of the trunk and tail, coloration, etc. I have only to add that this shark is stated to be of mild disposition and quite harmless. Indeed, the minute size of its teeth has led to the belief in the Seychelles that it is a herbivorous fish, which, however, is not probable.
ALBERT GUNTHER.
Natural History Museum, July 30.