and which, prepaved as a skeleton with much care by M. Paret, after having visited during twenty years the principal towns of Europe, continues at the present time, it appears, its peregrinations in the New World. It is the Pterobalæna gigas. The other balenoptera belongs to the small species, which does not exceed thirty feet in length, and which has always forty-eight vertebræ; it is the Pterobalæna minor of Knox, or the Pterobalæna rostrata of Fabricius.[1] The skeleton preserved in the Zoological Garden of Antwerp belonged to an individual stranded on the coast of Holland, and is of a third species, the Pterobalæna communis.[2]
"The Academy will remember that we entertained it three years ago with the Dolphin Globiceps, found dead at sea by the fishermen of Heyst under very interesting circumstances. It was a mother, which at first they had taken for a barrel, and which was on the point of going down.[3]
"It is the same animal which the Feroe islanders look out for every year with such great anxiety, and whose flesh is esteemed by them a delicious dish.[4] The Grindewahl—for that is the name they give them—make their appearance in these isles with the thrushes and woodcocks elsewhere; with this difference, that the thrushes and woodcocks figure only on the tables of the rich, whilst the flesh of the grindewahl is the food of the poor. It is by thousands that they are taken every year; and one of the most curious spectacles which can be given to a sovereign is a fishery of the grindewahl in one of the fiords of Feroe, made in the presence of the King of Denmark when he visits these isles. But the most formidable of the cetaceans which visit our latitudes is the orca, or ork. We see it from time to time on our coasts. Two individuals of this dangerous species, a young and an adult female, were stranded in 1843–44 near Ostend, and an adult female was found dead on the strand in 1848. The ork is by far the most formidable of all the great marine animals; the colossal whale, even, is not exempt from his vigorous attacks; it is truly the consternation of all. Nothing is more curious than to listen to the tales of the fishermen of Greenland and Spitzbergen of the habits of these marine monsters. What violence in the struggle, what tenacity in the attack! One would think one was listening to the recitals of travellers in the deserts of Africa, narrating the gigantic struggles of the great mammifers, the terrible assaults made by the lions and tigers on the elephants, the buffalos, or antelopes. The first of August of this year, a fine male lost itself on the coast of Jutland. Intelligence was sent immediately to Copenhagen, and Professor Eschricht made his way to the place. He wished to know above all on what this animal had fed during its last hours; and he soon discovered that not without reason the ork is the terror of the seas. It contained in its stomach (one would hardly have supposed it) thirteen poroises and fifteen seals! My learned friend searched with a feeling of horror whether amongst this frightful mass of victims he could not find
- ↑ This species comes regularly ashore on the coast of Norway. Near Bergen, they take them every year. Fabricius knew it well in Greenland, but he erred in giving it the name proposed by Linnæus, who did not know the whales. This example shows that it is not always the name of the first author which ought to be preserved. There exists a skeleton of this species in the Royal Museum of Brussels; another, of a young individual stranded at Ostend, is in the Cabinet of the University of Ghent; and a third, from Greenland, formed a long time ago part of the collection of the Catholic University of Louvain.
- ↑ Bulletin de l'Académie, t. xxiv., No. 3.
- ↑ 'Recherches sur la Faune littorale de Belgique (Cétacés).' Mém. de l'Acad. Roy. de Belgique, t. xxxii.
- ↑ Comptes Rendus, t. xlvii., July 12, 1858.
