PISCATORIAL POTENCY Snt,—In my humble opinion, Ian Niall and subsequent
correspondents have based the problem of eating live fish and its reputed determinism of se.x upon altogether a funda- mentally unsound premise.
Some years ago, while surf-boarding off Sarawak. I chanced to be swallowed by a shark. My subsequent extrication from the predica- ment has been sufficiently described in my book (Down By The Ventral Fin. The Dorsal and the Deep Blue Sea. and I Chose Freedom) to obviate the retelling. However, the sex- determinism of sharks or whales which have swallowed live men (or women) has yet to be adequately explored.
&huff], in his monumental monograph on mammals, has cast some light on one aspect of the problem. He notes that of some twenty- one recorded instances of Jonastic mastication (gonz gegessen wie der Jortat) in whales, nine- teen subsequently produced exclusively female litters, while the remainder bore male whales. Herr Dr. Mordlich Blatter pursued similar
studies off the coast of Sierra Leone until borne off to sea by an irate dolphin. His findings, unfortunately, were never published as World War I intervened shortly thereafter.
Possibly other of your correspondents may have data relevant to a subject given all too scant attention in the popular press and even in journals of the calibre of the Spectator, from which one is given to expect a greater degree of responsibility.—Yours faithfully,
HUM PHREY QUADRANT Institute of Piscatorial Propagation Afloat, Near Dogger Bank, North Sea
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