10 The White Whale. 



These four whales were caught in the same locality, and conveyed in the 

 same manner as the former one, under the care of Mr. Coup. That brought 

 to London is rather larger than its predecessor. I am informed that Mr. 

 Farini's agents have six more of these whales alive in a sea-pond on the coast 

 of Labi-ador. They can be sent to him at short notice. 



It has been generally supposed that the conveyance of the cetacea 

 alive for long distances dates merely from the recent exhibition of them 

 in the Zoological Gardens, and the New York, .Brighton, and West- 

 minster Aquaria ; and many persons will be surprised to learn that 

 in olden times it was not only occasionally accomplished, but that dolphins 

 were thus regularly sent to market. Eondelet, who was governing phy- 

 sician of the University of Medicine at Montpelier, and wrote in 1558, 

 referring to the dolphins, in controvertion of the statement of Pliny and 

 Ovid,* that they die the moment they touch ground, makes us acqnainted 

 with a very interesting fact : " The female," he says, " of which I give the poi'- 

 trait at the head of this chapter, and which I dissected, lived out of water 

 for some time after its capture, and dolphins have been carried alive from 

 Languedoc to Lyons. Our fishermen, when they wish to convey them alive to 

 along distance, allow a little wine to trickle down the blowhole, which passes 

 thence to the stomach." How the poor beast could endure this treatment 

 without coughing, sputtering, and choking, or how the wine could pass from 

 the spiracle to the stomach, I cannot understand. But if it was not beneficial, 

 it seems to have done no harm, for from the nearest part of the coast of 

 Languedoc to Lyons is 130 miles, and the carriage of a live dolphin thus far 

 in the lumbering vehicles of those days, before the invention of railways, must 

 have required skill, care, and persistent attention. 



Eondelet does not mention the purpose for which the dolphins were taken 

 from Languedoc to Lyons ; but Aldrovandus (" De Piscibus," p. 712), quoting 

 him as saying that they were conveyed alive to Lyons and Avignon, adds 

 that they were regularly eaten by the "navvies" {fossores) and the lower 

 orders of the people, because as they lived for a long time out of water, and 

 their flesh was durable, they were less liable to putrefaction than fish sent 

 on so long a journey. 



The skin of the Beluga is not invariably creamy white, like that of the 

 specimen brought to London. Captain Scoresby describes some which ho 

 saw as having been of a yellow colour approaching to orange, and others as 

 tinged, with a rosy hue. The young are bluish-gi-ey, sometimes mottled with 

 brown spots. Like the common porjioise, it is far from being a timid 



Ovid writes : — 



' Quam postquam bibulis injocit fluctus arenis, 

 Uuda simul miserum vitaque d«stituit." 



Ariatotlo, with his amazing acqiiaintanco with tho habits of animals, knew better 

 than that four hundred years before Pliny and Ovid jmblished this error, for he wrote 

 that " the dolphin is able to live for a long time out of water, groaning and panting in 

 tho act of breathing after tho manner of whales ;" and he adds, " in i'act they can live 

 longer out of water than in the water if they are prevented coming to the surface to 

 breathe, for many are suffocated by being kept submerged when taken in nets, as not a 

 few know." This was written 2200 years ago. To thousands of well-educated persons 

 at tho present day it would appear to be a startling discovery if staled as a newly- 

 observed fact. Gesner mentions a dolphin taken at Ariminium which lived out of water 

 for three days. 



