EXHUMING A WHALE 169 



accumulated by taking opportunities as they occur, 

 until the person interested finds that he, almost 

 unconsciously, knows more of the matter than any 

 one else. His first hunting ground was Rosherville. 

 *'To Rosherville Gardens with Dr. Murie to see 

 the skeleton of the whale " is the entry under date 

 November 14, 1863. In the next year a whale was 

 reported to have been stranded on the Norfolk coast, 

 and Flower went to see and measure It. He 

 took with him Mr. James Flower, Articulator at the 

 Hunterian Museum, and visited Norwich, where, in 

 regular East Anglian fashion, they drove by dogcart 

 to Cromer, as no railway then existed there. They 

 looked up the gamekeeper at North Repps, and 

 arranged operations for the next day. It appeared 

 that the whale had been stranded some time before 

 and buried in the sand. All the next day was 

 spent in digging up the skeleton, which proved to 

 be that of a lesser fin whale, 25 feet long. It 

 had been cast ashore in November 1862, and 

 buried by order of Mr. Gurney, as sand was a good 

 preservative and kept the bones all together. 



Flower caused the whole skeleton to be recovered, 

 packed it up, and sent it to the Royal College of 

 Surgeons, where it now is. Many years later, when 

 he was advocating a different form of burial than in 

 closed coffins, he referred to his experience in 

 digging up the whale. In 1875 he wrote to the 

 Times that as the public would not be likely to 

 favour cremation, there was much to be said for 



