THE ORDER CETACEA. 109 



length. The formation of the mouth and head is re- 

 corded as bearing a resemblance to the beak of an eagle 

 and the figure of a sword.* 



The chronicles of Flanders report, that, in the month 

 of November, 1402 or 1403, there were eight whales 

 stranded before the port of Ostend, the longest of which 

 measured nearly seventy feet, and produced nearly 

 twenty-four tons of oil.f On the 20th of January, 1 762, 

 there was discovered a dead whale, measuring forty 

 French feet in circumference, on the ride between 

 Blankenberg and Ostend, nearer to the latter city. 

 After having been exposed to the public for five days, 

 it was sold for the benefit of the sovereign, for the sum 

 of 192 Flanders florins (about 16/. 13s. 4d.) Several 

 of these creatures have at different times been killed or 

 stranded upon the British coast. Captain Scoresby has 

 recorded several of these events. One was captured on 

 the coast of Scotland, in the year 1692. Another was 

 fifty-two feet long, and had been stranded near Eye- 

 mouth, on the 19th of June, 1752. Another, nearly 

 seventy feet in length, ran ashore on the coast of Corn- 

 wall, on the 18th of June, 1797- Three were killed on 

 the north-west coast of Ireland, in the year 1762, and 

 two in 1763. One or two have been killed in the river 

 Thames. Another was embayed and destroyed in Balta 

 Sound, Shetland, in the winter of 1817-18, some of 

 whose remains were seen by Captain Scoresby, Jun., 

 who thus states its dimensions : — Length, eighty-two 

 feet; lower jaw-bones, twenty-one feet each; longest 

 blade of the baleen or whalebone, about three feet. In- 

 stead of hair at the inner edge and point of each lamina, 



* From this vague description, I am of opinion that it was a Balienuptera 

 Aculo-Rostrala, or the sharp-nosed whale of Pennant. 



t Dr. Dubar has not mentioned the species which they belonged to. 



