History and Progress of Comparative Anatomy. 43 



and zoology. Belon is the author of several works on zoology 

 and natural history, distinguished for numerous original and 

 accurate observations. 



The first of these, on the Natural History of Fishes, consists 

 of two books, which appear to be merely preliminary sketches 

 of what he proposed to do *. In the first he gives short sketches 

 with illustrative figures of the sturgeon, the attilus or adano of 

 the Po, and which appears, from its projectile tubular mouth, to 

 be a species of sturgeon, probably the Acipcnser huso, the tun- 

 ny, the citharus or sea-bream, the tiigla or gurnard, one which 

 he names the sea-serpent, and another the sea-boar. All these 

 he is at pains to distinguish from the dolphin, not only in habit, 

 but in structure and function. 



The dolphin he distinguishes into three species, the dolphin 

 proper or the sea^goose, so named from its long snout, (Delphi- 

 nus delphis, Lin.) ; the porpoise or sea-hog {Delphinus phocce- 

 na, Lin.) {phoccena, Cuv.) ; and the grampus or orca {Delphi- 

 nus orca), characterized by a bent obtuse snout {bee camus et 

 moulce), and a less degree of corpulence than the dolphin. The 

 specimen from which his description of the latter animal is form- 

 ed, was caught in the sea on the coast of Freport in Normandy 

 weighed 800 pounds, measured 3 paces^ or at least Qi feet in 

 length, and 7 feet in girth at the thickest part of the body. 

 This animal, which he allows to be the largest fish he had seen 

 had further 40 teeth in each jaw, exclusive of 4 rudimentary 

 fangs before. 



In the second book he gives an account of the anatomical pe- 

 cuUarities of the dolphin and porpoise, with occasional observa- 

 tions on the comparative characters between these and fishes on 

 the one hand, and mammiferous animals on the other. In both 

 he remarks the blowing tube above the head, the outlet of the 

 windpipe, though that of the dolphin is less advanced than that 

 of the iwrpoise. Both, he remarks, have lungs similar to those 

 of man, and differing only in being in two lobes or rio-ht and 

 left, with the heart between them, instead of being rather infe- 

 rior to the lung, as in man. 



The lungs, he states, are susceptible of inflation from the 



• L'Histoire Naturelle des Estranges Poissons Marins, avec la vraie 

 Peincture et Description du Daulphin et de plusieurs autres de son espece 

 Observc'e par Pierre Belon du Mans. A Paris 1551. 4to. Pp.115. 



