The life of the turtles and fresh water tortoises is a lively one in comparison to that of the land species. Instead of the short and misshapen legs that serve the purposes of locomotion to the latter, they are furnished with paddles that enable them to swim with great rapidity, and were it not for their sleeping habits, and for the necessity for the females to go ashore to lay their eggs, man would have but few opportunities of enjoying turtle soup, for their speed is far greater than that at which any boat could be rowed. They are thus able to obtain an abundance of food from the slower moving fish; and as their power of jaw is very great they are practically masters of the waters they frequent. Those close observers, the Chinese, who have a marked partiality for turtle, do not rely wholly upon its sleepiness of habit or its occasional landings for their supply of soup; they employ in their service a fish of the Remora species, which is of peculiar construction, and possesses a great power of grip. These fish are trained to the work, and taken out in tubs in the fishing boats. To the tail of each fish a ring is attached, and to this the fisherman attaches a long cord, and slips the fish overboard as soon as they approach a basking turtle. Directly the fish discovers the turtle, it makes towards it, and fixes itself firmly to it by means of a peculiar apparatus upon its head. The fisherman then hauls in the rope, and pulls both fish and turtle to the boat, and on getting them on board pushes the fish’s head forward, when it at once looses its hold. The story would appear incredible were it not vouched for on high authority.
Except as an example to man of patience under a singularly joyless life, the purpose of the land tortoise is not very marked. The second lesson it teaches—namely, that a life of indolence and lethargy conduces to extreme longevity—can scarcely be considered as an advantageous one. One species, indeed, furnishes a material that is utilised principally for the manufacture of combs and female ornaments, and it was remarked by the Brothers Mayhew as singular that the tortoise which supplies ladies with combs has itself no back hair. However, even in this respect the uses of the tortoise have of late years been greatly discounted by the introduction of compounds of india-rubber for the purpose of combs, and the decline of the fashion for the lofty decorative combs used by our grandmothers—a fashion which, however, appears to be, to a certain extent, reviving just at present.
Properly considered, the tortoise should be viewed as an example to be avoided rather than followed. Had it not been for the indolent habits of the prehistoric tortoise, there can be little doubt that it would in time have effected very considerable changes in its structure. The survival of the fittest might not have done much for it, as all tortoises can hold their own in the way of living on. But the progress of selection, the intermarriage between active males and females, would naturally have led in time to a much greater development of leg, and the tortoise might have become as speedy on land as the turtle in water. Unfortunately active tortoises, male or female, were extremely scarce, and the result of ages of indolence has been that the race has remained absolutely without progress, and that no visible improvement has been effected since its first introduction among the inhabitants of earth. The lesson furnished by it cannot be too earnestly taken to heart, especially as we see the same thing, although in a modified extent, among the lower races of humanity.
THE SHARK.
PHILOSOPHERS, although as a rule men of exceedingly positive opinions, wholly averse to confess their ignorance upon any point whatever, have failed signally in arriving at any satisfactory conclusion as to the advantage of the shark in the general scheme of nature. It has been suggested that it was created specially for the repression of conceit in man, and to show him that he was not, as he might otherwise have supposed, the undoubted lord of the inhabitants of the water as of the dwellers upon earth. Given special advantages—such as that of holding the end of a stout rope, at the other extremity of which is a hook fixed in a shark’s mouth—man may, with the assistance of a number of his fellows, have the best of the shark. But alone, and in the water, the advantage is wholly and absolutely the other way, and the strongest swimmer and the bravest heart fail when the tyrant of the sea seeks to make his acquaintance. It is true that reports have been current that there are natives of the islands of Southern Seas, who, armed with a knife, fear not to go out and give battle to the shark in its own element, but these tales must be accepted with caution, and are akin to the many apparently authentic narratives of the appearance of the sea-serpent.
The shark is a creature gifted with great strength, a savage temper, dogged perseverance, and exceptional power of jaw. The lion and tiger may mangle, the crocodile may lacerate, the bulldog may hold fast—the shark alone of living creatures possesses the power of cleanly nipping off a human limb at a bite. One ill service nature has done the shark, namely, that of placing a triangular fin on his back, which acts as a danger signal and gives warning of his approach. Happily the shark has not been gifted with sufficient sagacity to be aware of this peculiarity, for had he been so he would unquestionably have abandoned his habit of swimming close to the surface of the water, and would in that case have been enabled to approach his victim unobserved. The shark is a slow swimmer for his size and strength. Byron observes, “As darts the dolphin from the shark,” but Byron was a poet, and does not appear to have been a close observer of the habits of the inhabitants of the water; or he would have known that a shark would have no more chance of catching a dolphin than a sheep would of overhauling a hare. A shark will keep up with a sailing ship, but it is as much as it can do to follow in the wake of a fast steamer, and a torpedo boat would be able to give it points.
As it is a source of wonder how the flea manages to exist in the sand, where his chances of obtaining a meal may not occur once in a lifetime, so naturalists are greatly puzzled how the shark maintains himself. The ocean is wide, and the number of men who fall overboard small indeed in comparison to its area. The vast proportion of sharks, then, must go through their lives without a remote chance of obtaining a meal at the expense of the human kind. There is no ground for the supposition that the shark can exist upon air. He is not, like the whale, provided with an apparatus that enables him to sweep up the tiny inhabitants of the seas. He is too slow in swimming, and infinitely too slow in turning, to catch any fish that did not deliberately swim into his mouth; and unless we suppose that, as is said of the snake, he exercises a magnetic influence over fish, and causes them to rush headlong to destruction between his jaws, it is impossible to imagine how he obtains a sufficient supply of food for his sustenance. As it would appear that it is only when he gets the good luck to light upon a dead or badly injured fish that the shark has ever the opportunity of making a really square meal, his prolonged fasts certainly furnish an ample explanation and excuse for his alleged savagery of disposition.