FINDING A WHALES SKELETON. 7 1 



locality, after a week we moved on some ten miles farther north, where we 

 spent the remaining portion of the month of August, collecting a consider- 

 able number of birds and mammals, but finding fossils still scarce. One 

 day, when encamped at this place, while walking northward along the 

 beach, scanning the bluffs in search of fossils, I came upon the body of a 

 whale which had at some previous time been cast upon the beach and lay 

 partially buried in the shingle. The thick hide was still intact, entirely 

 covering the bony skeleton. Indeed as I saw it at this first visit the 

 carcass seemed to have suffered little from decomposition. To satisfy my 

 curiosity I paced its length, thirty-one steps as it lay extended on the 

 shingle. The great body of this huge animal of many tons weight, as it 

 lay weathering on the beach at an altitude only reached by the highest 

 spring tides, furnished a striking example of the force of the tidal wave by 

 which it had been borne in and left stranded in the position it then occu- 

 pied. I looked longingly at it and wished with all my heart that I might 

 include its skeleton in our collection of recent Mammalia, well knowing 

 how much there still remained to be learned concerning the Cetacea of 

 these southern seas. However, with the small means at my disposal and 

 the personnel of the expedition limited to Mr. Peterson and myself, this 

 thought had to be reluctantly dismissed. 



