THE AMIABLE SHARK.

Colonist, Volume LIII, Issue 13052, 11 March 1911, Page 4

THE AMIABLE SHARK.

MR. FRANK BULLEN ON ITS

VIRTUES,

Mr F. T. Bnllen,.a famous authority on whales, delighted a, large audience of boys and girlsj their fathers and their mothers, their uncles and their aunts, by a holiday lecture which ho gave in the Imperial Institute, Lon-v don, at Christmas on "Deep-sea People at Home."

He showed pictures of whales and sharks and sword-fish and all the fearsome monsters of the ocean.. They lost all their ferociousness when Mr Bullcn began to talk about fcheir engaging little ways. He has studied them from the decks of ships becalmed in the tropics for a fortnight and from the wet thwarts of a tossing boat in the northern seas. He talksi about them with an intimate affection of a fancier for his pe.t dogs.

Take tlie shark, for instance. "Now, really, my dear young friends, the shark is a most estimable character. Has business is to be a. scavenger of the sea, and whatever comes near him he pats. He, §ats men, yes; but not bepau^o lip likes' mcii. only because thay happen 'to he, the.re r Jhayg (seen him eat a bag of cinders in the same way. If a man falls in the water and splashes the shark will wait until he finishes splashing before trying to eat him. He has a devouring hunger, and cats because* that is what he was made for.

"He is a loving parent, and he *>stlablishes lifelong friendships. The beautiful blue mackerel which sailors call the pilot fish accompanies him like a dog. Catch a shark, cut it into unrecognisable piecee and throw them overboard, and the pilot fish will follow tho ship for hqurs waiting for the reappearance of its mast^'r/T . -Pictures of. the great whales caused little oj'os to grow big. A monster about the size of a Dreadnought was shown on the screen, making- the North.Atlantic boil. ""He opens his mouth ap4 takes in four million tit-: bits at a swaiiowful,!''sai4 Mr JJ(i}|&n,' "but for all that he is not a terrible being. Ho is just like* a great big jelly-fish. You need not spear him. Chase him fast enough and he will die of fatty degeneration of the heart". He is (so happy when the closoi seaeo7i conies and he can go to sleep on the bed of the ocean forsi* mptiwis;

"You may pierce'a m-jpthe-r whale as much as you Jike and she does not protost, but kiif her iajf and there arc no limits to her vengeance. # Frfey-iwj boats set out from California one 3ay, and by aepifJent a harpconer killed a calf which was cuddling up tg its mother. Within an hour* the mother whale sank fifty of the boats, killed seven men, aud injured seventeen more,//