ns. The principal market for the former is
Hong Kong, but the Chinese merchants of the Australasian Colonies will
always buy sharks' fins and tails at from 6d. to 11d. per lb., the fins
bringing the best price on account of the extra amount of glutinous
matter they contain, and the which are highly relished by the richer
classes of Chinese as a delicacy. The tails are also valued as an
article of food in China; and, apart from their edible qualities, have a
further value as a base for clear varnishes, &c.; and I was informed
by a Chinese tea-merchant that the glaze upon the paper coverings of
tea-chests was due to a preparation composed principally of the refuse
of sharks' fins, tails, and skins.

All the natives of the Gilbert, Kingsmill, and other Pacific equatorial
islands are expert shark fishermen; but the wild people of Ocean Island
(Paanopa) and Pleasant Island (Naura), two isolated spots just under the
equator, surpass them all in the art of catching jackshark. It was the
fortunate experience of the writer to live among these people for many
years, and to be inducted into the native method of shark-catching. In
frail canoes, made of short pieces of wood, sewn together with coco-nut
fibre, the Ocean Islanders will venture out with rude but ingeniously
contrived _wooden_ hooks, and capture sharks of a girth (_not_ length)
that no untrained European would dare to attempt to kill from a
well-appointed boat, with a good crew.

Shark-catching is one of _the_ industries of the Pacific, and a very
paying industry too. Five-and-twenty years ago there were quite a dozen
or more schooners sailing out of Honolulu, in the Hawaiian Islands, to
the isolated atolls of the North Pacific--notably Palmyra and Christmas
Islands--where sharks could be caught by the thousand, and the crews,
who were engaged on a "lay," like whalemen, made "big money"; many of
them after a six months' cruise drawing 500 dollars--a large sum for a
native sailor.

The work is certainly hard, but it is exciting, and the writer will
always remember with pleasure a seven months' shark-fishing cruise
he once had in the North Pacific, the genial comrades--white men and
brown--and the bag of dollars handed over to him by the owners when the
ship was paid off in Honolulu.

II

It is not generally known, except to scientists and those who are
acquainted with the subject, that a large percentage of the various
species and varieties of sea snakes are