Art. XXXII.—On the Occurrence of Lamna cornubica, Porbeagle Shark, Flem., the Mako of the Maoris, in New Zealand.

Transactions and Proceedings of the Royal Society of New Zealand, Volume 7, 1874, Page 237

Art. XXXII.—On the Occurrence of Lamna cornubica, Porbeagle Shark, Flem., the Mako of the Maoris, in New Zealand. By Julius Haast, Ph.D., F.R.S., Director of the Canterbury Museum. [Read before the Philosophical Institute of Canterbury, 2nd April, 1874.] The Canterbury Museum received a few days ago from Mr. W. H. Webb, of Laverick's Bay, Banks Peninsula, the skin of a shark, which upon examination proved to belong to Lamna cornubica, the Porbeagle shark of older English authors, and which, according to Dr. Günther (Catalogue of Fishes, British Museum, Vol. VIII., page 390), has hitherto been observed only in the northern hemisphere, as the specimens alluded to in that standard work were obtained in the Atlantic, the Mediterranean, and Japan. Captain Hutton in his Catalogue of New Zealand Fishes, page 77, refers the teeth of the Mako of the Maoris, and which are worn by the latter as ear-ornaments, to Lamna glauca. If the specimens examined by him belong really to that or the nearly allied species L. spallanzanii, they ought to be without basal cusps, whilst the specimen under consideration, and now the property of the Canterbury Museum, has the basal cusps well developed. From this fact alone it appears that the latter cannot belong to Lamna glauca, but must represent some other species, either of cosmopolitan habits or confined to the southern hemisphere, as for example, the Notidanus indicus of the southern seas which represents the Notidanus griseus of the northern hemisphere. Two Maori carvers from Poverty Bay, Northern Island, at present occupied at the museum, pronounced the skin to belong to a young Mako and informed me that this fish when in an adult state was about 12 feet long, and that the teeth in old and young had always the small basal cusps on each side of the lanceolate tooth; consequently, if the teeth examined by Captain Hutton are without basal cusps, there must be several species of Lamna inhabiting the coast of New Zealand. The animal to which the skin belonged was 4 feet 10 inches long; head, back, sides and fins are of a slaty colour; chin, belly and posterior side of the fins near the root dirty white; teeth lanceolate, long, with sharp lateral edges, with a small basal cusp on each side, three rows in each jaw and parallel with each other. In the lower jaw the first outer row contains three on each side, whilst the second and third rows consist of thirteen each. In the upper jaw there are three teeth on each side of the outer row and thirteen teeth in the middle and inner rows respectively; of these the third tooth on each side and in each row is remarkably small.

In other respects, as to form of head, position of mouth, gills and fins, our specimen accords perfectly well with the specific characters of Lamna cornubica as given by Dr. Günther, and I have therefore assigned the remains in question to this species, although that eminent ichthyologist observes that in young specimens the basal cusps are absent. Postcript. 2nd November, 1874.—Since this paper was written the Canterbury Museum has received the remains of another specimen referable to the same species, which was obtained in Lyttelton Harbour; it was 7 feet 6 inches long. In its dental arrangement, although the teeth are somewhat larger, it accords entirely with the former example.