This learned man. who was so well versed in classical literature, quotes and criticises the accounts of these animal forms 

 given by older authors. In this way he has numerous quotations from Aristotle, Oppian. Pliny, Ælianus, etc. for which 

 reason his great work will retain its full value from a historical point of view, and as an original source. This edition also 

 contains extracts from Be Ion (Petrus Belonius) and Rondelet (Guilielmus Rondeletius). The animals mentioned in his 

 work, are, as is well known, arranged in alphabetical order, and most of them are also figured. Under the heading Delphinus, 

 a gravid uterus with the embryo is figured. The Dolphin's anatomy is mentioned, also that the females usually give birth 

 to one, occasionally two young ones, after 10 months gestation. The birth takes place in the summer. The foetus is inclosed, 

 in the uterus, in the chorion, the anmion, and the allantois: "sanguine nutritur per venas unibilicales, spiritum per arterias 



easdem trahit Cocunt delphini supinis partibus admotis nuituis amplexibus inhærentes, hominum more." A passage 



from Oppian is quitted in support of this (p. 38.3). Under the same heading a number of stories is related about the 

 habits, disposition and intelligence of the Dolphin. 



Among older writers in Northern literature, who have treated of Whales to any great length, Peder Claussøn 

 Friis (b. 1545 at Ekersund, Norway; d. 1614) claims a special mention. In his account "Om Fische," he gives an extract 

 from the Royal Mirror (Speculum regale), in which the different species of Whales are enumerated and generally briefly 

 described. The sperma of the Whale is moreover mentioned under "Huall-Raff", "which on account of its fat and the air 

 which it contains, floats on the top of the water like froth." In his account of a whale-fishery, he relates that "when whales 

 are at play, several may often run after one mother- whale." He describes a large Whale — probably a fin-backed whale 

 Balænoptera musculus — which was stranded in August 1532 at Thinemudt (Tynemouth?) (England). Olaus Magnus 

 repeats the fact of the stranding of this whale. Olaus Worm (Museum Wormianum, 1656) translates into Latin the 

 account of the different species of whales repeated by Peder Clauson Friis from the Royal Mirror'). Nothing further is 

 related concerning the embryos of whales. These accounts of Whales and their habits have probably arisen in a great 

 measure from a gradual collection of the experiences of the fishing population of the coast. 



Thomas Bartholin describes the anatomy of the Porpoise, anatome tursionis, which may presumably be identified 

 with our ordinary Phocæna communis. In the presence of the Dano-Norwegian king, Frederick HI and other spectators, 

 he dissected a female Dolphin and its foetus. He says: "The internal organs do not greatly differ from those in the human 

 being"; and he mentions the differences in his description. In the left part of the uterus he found a male foetus, with its 

 head turned towards the mouth of the uterus (capite ad os uteri verso) : the right part of the uterus was empty. He describes 

 the umbilical cord with prominent quadruple vessels, and its division and disappearance in the sides of the placenta. His 

 remarks on the placenta, amnion and allantois are worthy of notice: "Placenta exilis concreto sanguine similis, parietibus 

 chorii agglutinatur. Tenuis amnios. Allantoides humores serosum continet, fareiminibus inclusum." 



In his anatomical description of the embryo. Bartholin pays special attention to the fletal openings and passages, 

 such as the communications between the v. umbilicalis and the v. hepatica, the open urachus, the small supra-renal bodies, 

 the testes with their connections, hidden in the abdomen, and the connection of the membrum with the cartilaginous" hvoid-like" 

 bone; the position of the heart beneath the ensiform process is moreover mentioned, and its main fætal communications. 



The works of Major (De anatome phocaence . . . Ephemer. medico-physicarum annus tertius) and E. Tyson (The 

 anatomy of a porpess, London, 1680, 40)-) also treat of the anatomy of the Porpoise. 



Martens describes several species of whale, especially the Greenland Whale and makes a few remarks on the 

 Nordcaper. With regard to the breeding of the Greenland Whale (pp. 103, 104) he only mentions that it gives birth to 1 

 or 2 young ones, and the author knows nothing about the duration of pregnancy. His attempt to make spermaceti from the 

 semen of the whale (which at that time was a general supposition), strikes us as rather comical. Klein gives an account 

 of the anatomy of the Phocæna, with special mention of certain muscles, and makes a systematic survey of the difi'erent 

 Cetacea. He took the holes on the embryo's upper li]). left by the hairs, to be organs of smell. 



Johan Anderson repeats from the "unanimous assertions of Greenland whalers," stories of the pairing of 

 Greenland whales in a jierpendicular position in the water, both "sinking on to their broad, flat-lying tail-fins," with their 

 heads pointing upwards, and embracing each other with their pectorals (swimmers). But at the same time he quotes P. Dudley's 

 account (Philos. Trans, no. 387, .4rt. 2), which states that the female lies upon her back and bends her tail l)ackwards, while 

 the male passes over her. They breed every other year, and the gravidity is said to last 9 or 10 months. A f(«tus no more 

 than 1 7 inches in length, says Anderson, has the form of the species, and is white. They are 20 feet long when they are born. 

 The young one sucks the maternal breast for 1 year. There are illustrations of the Narwhal, and among them of a foetus, which, 

 however, is unrecognisable. 



Brisson's "Regnum animale" contains only a system, in which the Cetacea form one particular dass separate 

 from Fishes; while Linnæus, in his "Systema Naturæ". allows the Cetacea to belong definitively to Mammals. 



') My attention was directed to tlie above literary particulars liy I'rof. (Just a v Storm, to wlioin I ti-nder my sincere thanks. 

 -) These two authors I know onlj- from extracts. 



