Having wounded one of these animals in the lateral part of the belly, we held him with lines fixed to the spears; he then began to describe a very narrow curve, and irritated by the cries of the people that were in the boats, ran off with a moderate velocity.  To the first boat, which held the lines just mentioned, the other boats were fastened, and it was a rather strange emotion to feel ourselves towed by the monster for more than three hours with a velocity that proved to be two miles per hour.  One of the boats was filled with water.  At last the animal was tired by the great loss of blood, and the boats assembled to haul in the lines and tow the shark on shore.

With much difficulty the nine boats towed the animal alongside the Vettor Pisani to have him hoisted on board, but it was impossible on account of his colossal dimensions.  But as it was high water we went toward a sand beach with the animal, and we had him safely stranded at night.

With much care were inspected the mouth, the nostrils, the ears, and all the body, but no parasite was found.  The eyes were taken out and prepared for histological study.  The set of teeth was all covered by a membrane that surrounded internally the lips; the teeth are very little, and almost in a rudimental state.  The mouth, instead of opening in the inferior part of the head, as in common sharks, was at the extremity of the head; the jaws having the same bend.

Cutting the animal on one side of the backbone we met (1) a compact layer of white fat 20 centimeters deep; (2) the cartilaginous ribs covered with blood vessels; (3) a stratum of flabby, stringy, white muscle, 60 centimeters high, apparently in adipose degeneracy; (4) the stomach.

By each side of the backbone he had three chamferings, or flutings, that were distinguished by inflected interstices.  The color of the back was brown with yellow spots that became close and small toward the head, so as to be like marble spots.  The length of the shark was 8.90 m. from the mouth to the pinna caudalis extremity, the greatest circumference 6.50 m., and 2.50 m. the main diameter (the outline of the two projections is made for giving other dimensions).

The natives call the species Tintoreva, and the most aged of the village had only once before fished such an animal, but smaller.  While the animal was on board we saw several Remora about a foot long drop from his mouth; it was proved that these fish lived fixed to the palate, and one of them was pulled off and kept in the zoological collection of the ship.

The Vettor Pisani has up the present visited Gibraltar, Cape Verde Islands, Pernambuco, Rio Janeiro, Monte Video, Valparaiso, many ports of Peru, Guayaquil, Panama, Galapagos Islands, and all the collections were up to this sent to the Zoological Station at Naples to be studied by the naturalists.  By this time the ship left Callao for Honolulu, Manila, Hong Kong, and, as the Challenger had not crossed the Pacific Ocean in these directions, we made several soundings and deep-sea thermometrical measurements from Callao to Honolulu.  Soundings are made with a steel wire (Thompson system) and a sounding-rod invented by J. Palumbo, captain of the ship.  The thermometer employed is a Negretti and Zambra deep-sea thermometer, improved by Captain Maguaghi (director of the Italian R.N.  Hydrographic Office).