lO 



NATURE 



[November 3, 1910 



water-borne. In such conditions recovery would be 

 rapid and the joints perfect, as can be seen to be the 

 case in the skeleton in the museum. 



The accident to this whale is very suggestive. In 

 a well-known experiment, Paul Bert reduced the pres- 

 sure of the air in the lungs of a dog^ by a not very 

 large fraction of an atmosphere, when the thorax 

 immediately collapsed, every rib being broken. When 

 a whale is struck and sounds, if only to a depth of 

 one hundred metres, the pressure on its body is in- 

 creased tenfold in a few seconds. How does its body 

 stand it? 



It is certain that the cachalot finds its prey in 

 water of considerable depth. When it has seized it, 



of meteorology, a science which, especially as 

 regards its application to the higher regions of 

 the atmosphere, owes much to the participation 

 of the Prince in its development. Until he 

 directed his attention to it, the hallons-sonde, carry- 

 ing their freight of valuable instruments, vyere very 

 frequently lost. Now, thanks to the method of keep- 

 ing the "dead reckoning" of the balloon, developed 

 and brought to perfection on the Princesse Alice, if it 

 is followed for a few minutes during its ascent, it 

 may disappear in the clouds, and its recovery, when 

 it descends at sea, is almost a certainty. This de- 

 partment of investigation has been prosecuted outside 

 the Mediterranean, and in the Prince's cruises of the 



Fig. 6. — Skeleton ji whalebone whale the ribs of which have been brolcen and mended. 



can it swallow it in situ, in a medium of water under 

 very high pressure? The dentition of this animal, a 

 formidable row of teeth in the lower jaw fitting into 

 corresponding sockets in the upper jaw, makes it 

 certain that, when it has seized its prey it can hold it 

 indefinitely. It has been observed that the cachalot 

 sometimes takes its prey to the surface and swallows 

 it there. Is this accidental or habitual? If habitual 

 is it not another link with the far-back time when its 

 habitat was the air and the land ? These are some 

 questions suggested by an attentive visit to the 

 Museum of Monaco. 



In the museum, room is provided for a department 



NO. 2140, VOL. 85] 



last two or three years it has been carried from the 

 Cape Verde Islands in the heart of the tropics to 

 the north of Spitsbergen, within five hundred miles 

 of the Pole. 



Besides the collections of animals and the instru- 

 ments for their capture and study, there is in the 

 lower part of the museum an aquarium, remarkable 

 for its size and the completeness of its installation. 

 This already commands a constant flux of visitors, 

 chiefly the curious, but it is also frequented by men 

 of science for serious study. It is already proposed 

 to enlarge it considerably. The storey above the 

 aquarium is divided into separate laboratories, fitted 



