CLASS PISCES.
119
Order ELASMOBRANCHII.
Sub-Order PLAGIOSTOMATA.
Family CARCHARIIDAE.
Gants GALEUS, Cuvier.
Galeus vulgaris, Fleming. Toper or Sweet William.
This Shark is, in my experience, but rarely taken on our
coast. One, caught by trawling in the Wallet, on October 23rd,
1886, was thought by its captor of sufficient rarity to make it
worth exhibiting in the town of Colchester. The capture
of another below Brightlingsea, in a shrimp-trawl, is noted
(Essex Nat., vol. ii., p. 137). This was a female, measuring
four feet nine inches long. Another, also a female, and
five feet six inches in length, was captured near Clacton
pier, on November 1st, 1888 (Essex Nat., vol. ii., p. 256).
Family LAMNIDAE.
Genus LAMNA, Cuvier.
Lamna cornubica, Cuvier. Porbeagle or Beaumaris Shark.
A fine specimen of this Shark was captured in a herring-net
on the Essex coast in 1874. It measured eight feet two inches
in length, and weighed from sixteen to twenty stone {Land
and Water, Oct. 10th, 1874, p. 285). Another was taken off
Harwich, by a lugger fishing for mackerel, and was exhibited
at Colchester and Ipswich. It measured between nine and
ten feet in length (Essex Nat., vol. vi., p. 154). Soon after,
on December 8th, 1892, a third was secured by Mr. Henry
Gentry, of St. Osyth, in the estuary of the Colne. This one,
a male, was seven feet ten inches long (ibid., p. 207).