640 PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. [aNNO I67I. 



tide had left him ; in the anatomy whereof I observed some things omitted by 

 Rondeletius* in his description of the dolphin. 



The length of this was by measure three feet seven inches ; a string of two 

 feet two inches girded him in the thickest place; the shape of his body was not 

 much unlike that of a tunny fish, only his snout longer and sharper ; his skin 

 was thin, smooth, and without scales. In an old and well grown fish the skin 

 may probably be thick and tough, as Rondeletius represents it. 



His fins are cartilaginous and flexible, not sharp or prickly, as the ancients 

 report them. On his back he has only one, which was distant from the tip of 

 his snout one foot nine inches, and the basis of it in length five inches and a 

 half, so that measuring from the tip of his snout to the end of the tail, it was 

 situate somewhat below the middle of the fish's length. On the belly it had 

 only one pair of fins, nine inches and a half distant from the tip of the lower 

 mandible, much about the place where the foremost pair of fins in other fishes 

 usually grow. The tail is forked, of the figure of a crescent; the breadth 

 thereof from angle to angle 1 1 inches. The situs or position of it contrary to 

 that of all other fishes, except those of this kind. For, whereas the plain of 

 the tail of other fishes, when they swim, stands erected perpendicularly to the 

 plain of the horizon, in this fish (and I suppose in all others of the cetaceous 

 kind) it lies parallel thereto. The reason whereof I conceive to be partly to 

 supply the use of the hindmost pair of fins in other fishes^ which serve to ba- 

 lance the body, and keep it up in the water, answering in proportion to the 

 hinder legs of a quadruped; hence we see, that those fishes, which have long 

 bodies and but one pair of fins, as eels, and the like, cannot keep themselves up 

 in the water, but lie always grovelling on the bottom ; pai-tly to facilitate the 



* A celebrated teacher of anatomy and physic at Montpellier in the l6th century. It is disputed 

 whether he or Ingrassias was the discoverer of the vesiculae seminales. At his instance an anatomical 

 tlieatre was built at Montpellier] wherein he is said to have dissected the dead body of one of his own 

 children> and to have incurred much obloquy for allowing his feelings as a parent to be overcome by 

 his ardour for anatomical inquiries. He died in 1566 of a bowel complaint, occasioned by eating im- 

 moderately of fresh figs. [A physician should have been more cautious in his diet; but physicians, 

 like the rest of mankind, will sometimes indulge in appetites and inclinations which they know to be 

 wrong. The writer of this note was acquainted with a medical practitioner of considerable eminence, 

 who could not refrain from eating toasted cheese, though he was subject to an alarming pulmonary 

 complaint, which was uniformly aggravated by it, and which terminated fatally at an age by no means 

 advanced; and there is now living a physician of his acquaintance, who, at an autumnal desert, never 

 ceases eating all the filberts he can lay his hands upon, although he very candidly acknowledges that 

 they are extremely indigestible and hurtful things.] He wrote several Latin treatises on medical 

 subjects, which were reprinted collectively at Geneva, l628, under the title Gulielmi Rondeletii 

 Opera omnia medica ; but the work for which he is most celebrated is that De Piscibus, printed at 

 Lyons, part L 1354, and part IL 1555, in folio. 



