ALL HANDS GIVE THE SHARK A MIGHTY HEAVE ASHORE.
fifteen feet long. If you catch a great leopard shark, or man-eater (Carcharodon carcharias), the white belly of which is seen in the photograph facing the following page, it may be worth while ripping him up to see whether there are any boots within, or perchance even more personal signs of human occupation. In one of these a sea-lion weighing 100 lb. was once found on the California coast, but you will be far more likely to come across a quantity of horseshoe crabs.
From this last shark figured we took three or four young ones, quite ready to swim away if they had been given the chance. They were not, for it is no part of humaneness to spare sharks.
Bird Life.
The bird life of Boca Grand is not sufficiently studied by those who spend their holiday there, so intent is everyone on fishing. Yet it is most interesting, what the plume hunters have left of it. America is the great land of waste as well as of production, and the egrets and other beautiful fowl are surely following the bison. On fine, still days, when there is great splashing of carangoid and other fish, the pelicans are soon astir, dashing into the shoals and putting them to rout with heavy loss. Then, too, may be seen the little kittiwake gulls settling unmolested on the heads and backs of the great birds, and always expectant of the scanty leavings that they never seem to get.
Pelicans are nowadays so scarce at Boca Grand that any small peculiarity is certain to be noticed whenever one puts in an appearance. I recollect one coming along one day with his pouch slit from side to side and hanging loose. What dreadful battle had given him such a gash could only be guessed, but he seemed to grow thinner and tamer and more hungry every day, for every fish that he caught forthwith dropped out through the gap. At length, however, he seemed to rise to the occasion, and as soon as he caught a fish, he would clap his beak close to his breast and coax his victim down his throat. The process was slow, but sure, and in a few weeks this pelican was well