282 The Oceanographical Museum at Monaco 



by the writer in a paper "On the Vertical Distribution of Tem- 

 perature in the Ocean," read before the Royal Society on 

 December 17, 1874, and published in its Proceedings, vol. xxm. 

 p. 123. 



In the great hall to the left of the entrance the visitor is 

 at once struck by the magnificent collection of skeletons of 

 Cetaceans, which includes those of many species. These are 

 skeletons of individual whales, nearly all of which have been 

 killed by the Prince himself, and each is complete, every bone 

 in the animal being accounted for. From all points of view 

 this collection is at once the most attractive and the most 

 interesting in the museum, and in it we see the Prince reflected 

 as a hunter and as a naturalist. 



In Fig. 3 we have the Orca, with its formidable double row of 

 teeth. It preys on other Cetaceans, and always shows plenty of 

 sport. The specimen 1 figured belonged to the leader of a school 

 of three, which was met with a few miles' outside of Monaco. 

 They fought to the death, and when killed they were towed 

 in and beached on what is now the new harbour of Monaco. 



Not far from the Orca is a skeleton, Fig. 4, of the best 

 known of the toothed Cetaceans, the cachalot or sperm whale. 

 It was not taken by the Prince himself, but he was present at 

 its capture, and his scientific instinct enabled him to seize an 

 opportunity which would probably have been missed by 

 another. The cachalot had been struck by a crew of whalers 

 from Terceira, one of the islands of the Azores. The Prince 

 followed the chase in his yacht, and was close to the animal 

 when it became evident that its end had come. At this 

 moment these animals always charge whatever they see, and 

 in their death agony they usually render whatever they have 

 last eaten. This animal charged the "Princesse Alice," but 

 the charge did not get home. The animal stopped, and a 

 large mass of something came out of its mouth close to the 

 yacht and began slowly to sink. The Prince at once jumped 

 into the dingy, and, with a long landing net, retrieved the 

 object before it sank out of sight. The object is represented 



1 This is the whale which Wedderburn succeeded in killing by one stroke 

 of the spear, as related p. 260. 



