306 



PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. 



[anno 1787. 



XXXVII. Abstract of a Register of the Barometer, Thermometer, and Rairif at 

 Lyndon, Rutland, 1786. By Thomas Barker, Esq, Also of the Rain at 

 South Lambeth, Surrey \ and at Selb our n and Fy field, Hampshire, p. 308, 



XXXVIII. Observations on the Structure and Economy of Whales. By John 



Hunter, Esq., F.R.S. p. 371. 

 The animals which inhabit the sea are much less known to us than those found 

 on land; and the economy of those with which we are best acquainted is much 

 less understood : we are therefore too often obliged to reason from analogy where 

 information fails; which must probably ever continue to be the case, from our 

 unfitness to pursue our researches in the unfathomable waters. This unfitness 

 does not arise from that part of our economy on which life and its functions de- 

 pend; for the tribe of animals which is to be the subject of this paper, has in 

 that respect the same economy as man, but from a difference in the mechanism 

 by which our progressive motion is produced. The anatomy of the larger marine 

 animals, when they are procured in a proper state, can be as well ascertailied as 

 that of any others; dead structure being readily investigated. But even such 

 opportunities too seldom occur, because those animals are only to be found in 



