Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 26.djvu/672

654 all the Chinese who pride themselves on being in the least degree familiar with the classics. Thus, in spite of the protestations of the poor frogs, who gambol in their best style on the banks of the ponds to show everybody that they are planted on four feet, the Mongolian painters and sculptors, regarding the writings of the literati as oracles, persist in representing them with only three feet! But the painters, even the most violent partisans of the romantic school, do not allow themselves to amputate a limb except when dealing with a purely artistic work. For common scientific books, they do not give themselves the trouble to put on a surgeon's apron for so little, and it is on account of this indolence that the plates that adorn the works on natural history are more true to the representation of nature than the text they illustrate.

I was so fortunate as to find one day, in a curiosity-shop in Canton, an old album in which were represented, in fifty-two brightly-colored plates, the principal fishes of the southern littoral of the Celestial Empire, which I have studied with much interest. I can not undertake to describe all the plates here, but will limit myself to the accounts of the species which would be regarded with most attention by the inhabitants of the West.

One of them is a singular animal, shaped somewhat like a whale, but with a head so like a woman's that we have to believe that the artist, rather than Nature, has been indulging in a little fancy-work. The accompanying text informs us that it is a shark of the species "three women with a long tail" (à longue queue des trois femmes). It is one of the most remarkable of the numerous sharks of the Yellow Sea. The Chinese pretend that its head resembles a woman's, whence its name; then, they ascribe to it the power of the evil-eye, but only under particular circumstances. Thus, if they take a three-women shark in their nets, they think it a bad sign, and throw it back into the water to ward off the evil spirits. But, if they take one of these same sharks with a hook, they regard it as a good sign, and the poor animal pays with his life for the happy message he brings the ungrateful fisherman. Another plate represents a shark of the kind called bird eaters. The animal derives its name from a fondness for winged flesh, which is in singular contrast with the habitual voracity of its congeners. In seeking to gratify its taste it lies upon the water as if dead. The sea-birds, taken by the trick, settle down upon what they think is a carcass out of which they can make a feast. When a sufficient number of them to give him a good taste have gathered upon his belly, Master Shark begins to sink his body slowly into the water, commencing with his tail, so as to drive his victims up to his head, and within reach of his capacious mouth. The whole operation, including the swallowing, is performed with such facility that we have to admire it at the expense of our sympathy for the victims of it.

The sharks play an important part in the life of the Chinese people, both of the coast and of the interior. The Yellow Sea is infested by