to receive the instalments from the few borrowers who did keep up their payments. As these were very few indeed, and some of them a little irregular, it was decided that each Director should take his chance— little or much-pocketing what he received, and waiting patiently until his turn came round again. As the proposition emanated from Jimmy, the Board agreed unanimously "that nothing could be fairer.”

There was some talk of presenting Jimmy with a piece of plate, for having settled the affairs of the Society so satisfactorily; but when I was asked what I thought the assets would realize when those that were marked "good" had paid up, and, having gone over the book, and found it would only be one shilling and threehalfpence in the pound, the Directors came to the conclusion that the whole of the assets would not purchase so large a piece of plate as they should like him to have; so they decided that he should receive the first instalment of the weekly payments instead. "I should have got the plate, else," said Jimmy.

So was our Loan Society wound up-all, as Jimmy said, through the borrowers having nothing to pay with when we tried to recover; else it would have been a success. Towards the close I resumed my duties as head-waiter at the lodging-house, to the great satisfaction of my mistress, who found it very hard to get out of her "sharp practice," which at best she did clumsily, while I made the establishment yield the most profit, without any complaint from the lodgers.

If we cut our mutton-chops so as to get four out of a pound of the loin, I had a way of my own of bringing it in, and placing it before a hungry boarder, and lifting off the cover, and saying, "You'll find that a very beautiful chop, sir;" so that, whatever he might think about the smallness of the chop, he couldn't very well complain, nor yet ask for another, as, the very moment he had finished, I whipped away his plate, placed the cheese and bread-tray before him, and left him to eat as much of that as he liked. Then I had a knack of talking to a gentleman while he dined, if I found he was very ravenous, by telling him what a quantity of bad meat had been seized in the markets, and how difficult it was to tell it from good, and what numbers of people had died through eating too much of it, and such-like. After such remarks, they were generally eager to get at the bread-and-cheese, instead of grumbling, as they mostly did if any of the under-servants waited on them, for then my mistress had to be summoned, and the matter generally ended in a row. "Jack's got a policy about his way of doing things," Jimmy used to say; "there would be many a rumpus, else, with such short commons."

(To be continued.)

SOMETHING ABOUT SHARKS.

BY LIEUT. C. R. LOW.

ERHAPS some of my readers, on casting their eyes over the heading of this article, will exclaim: "And what can you tell us that we don't know already about sharks?" Well, I have no intention of boring my interrogator with dry details of the conformation and anatomical structure of these creatures which will be better described in works by professional writers of natural history, but I can furnish you with one or two anecdotes that have come under my personal cognizance, and with interesting details of their general appearance, and the manner in which they are caught and treated on board ship.

As is well known, there are a great variety of species or "genera" of the voracious fish known as the shark, but the most common are the "Hammer-headed," the "Greenland," the "Ground" shark, and the most terrible of all, the great "White" shark, which has been known to grow to the length of thirty-five feet; it is a well-authenticated fact that some of these monsters have, at a single bite, cut a man in two, and it is said an entire human body was once found in the stomach

of one of these fish. The nearer you approach the equator, the larger

is their size and more voracious their habits. There was once a famous shark that for years was the dread of the boatmen in Port Royal, at Jamaica, where the creature was well known to all the men-of-war'smen on the West India Station.'

The "Blue" shark, as well as a smaller species called the "Fox" shark, is seen on the English coasts occasionally. The "Hammer-headed" shark again is a very curious-looking fish, and carries his head, as sailors say, "athwart ships"-it extends on either side a good deal beyond the body, which might be defined as the handle to the hammer. The "Ground" shark is seldom a "man-eater," and is not considered a dangerous antagonist. The "Greenland" shark seldom grows beyond fourteen

feet in length, and is, next to the sword fish, the most pertinacious and savage enemy the much-enduring whale has to put up with. This shark " runs aboard" the leviathan of the deep when he is hungry, and quietly commences helping himself to large junks out of the most tender parts of his unwieldy prey. He scoops out with his snout pieces of flesh as big as a man's head, notwithstanding the fury of the gigantic fish, as lashing the ocean with his mighty tail, he creates whirlpools large enough to swamp a boat. Then rising to the surface of the sea, and making an agonizing but ineffectual effort to relieve himself of his puny foe, the whale dives again and rushes down, down, through miles and leagues of water till he reaches the oozy bed or coral caverns of the ocean, where at length he manages to disengage the now gorged and satiated creature. All sharks have a hard coriacious skin, which "Jack" turns to account in the way of tobacco-pouches. When dried it is called "Shagreen," and is very rough, and will wear for years.

The most voracious as well as the largest of these creatures is the great White shark, which is found in nearly every quarter of the globe, and, like the Bengal tiger, is a confirmed "man-eater." His snout advances considerably beyond the mouth, which can only be used or seen when the fish turns over on his side. It is a sight to look into a shark's mouth; the teeth extend tier behind tier in five or more rows almost in countless numbers, and are all triangular shaped, and as sharp at the edges as a razor. There is nothing in the animal kingdom so terrible and formidable as a shark's mouth: some of the teeth are used to seize its prey, some to hold it, and some to rend it into shreds. The food it devours is always swallowed whole without mastication; the process of digestion takes place in the stomach. The vitality of sharks is astonishing. I have seen the body of one of them cut up into many parts, and yet for a considerable time the flesh gave evidence of life, the mutilated pieces visibly crept and throbbed when touched. The heart also beat for hours after it was cut out of the trunk. It is a dangerous act for a man to put his hand into the mouth of a shark, even after the head has been separated from the body. I once saw the teeth in the decapitated head of a shark close on the little finger of a sailor who was feeling their sharp edges, and the flesh was torn off to the bone. This strange vitality is a well-known characteristic of these creatures, and has been commented upon by naturalists.

The shark only uses his tail and pectoral fins in swimming; the two dorsal fins and the fin on the belly are used, however, to change the direction of its progress through its native element.

It is grand fun on board ship to angle for sharks, and the amusement