ON THE 



NOETHERN SPECIES OF ORCA. 



I. 



On Wednesday, the 24th of July, 1861, I received a telegram from Mr. Ernst Benzon, 

 hereditary lord of the manor of Benzon, in the vicinity of the town of Randers, in Jutland, in 

 which he informed me that, while saihng in his pleasure yacht in the Kattegat, he had found the 

 carcass of a Cetacean about eleven ells long, which he had towed to Gjerrild strand belonging to 

 his estate, where he would order it to remain untouched for my free examination, if I should set 

 off for Grenaa by the steamer on that very day. I could not but accept such a kind invitation, 

 affording a chance of a valuable acquisition to the museums of the university, as well as to 

 science in general. I therefore set off at five o'clock in the afternoon, accompanied by Mr. 

 Iversen, the assistant in the Zootomical-physiological Museum, and arrived at Grenaa early 

 the next morning, where I found Mr. Benzon's carriage waiting to bring us to the manor-house 

 and, a couple of hours afterwards, to the shore. 



That it was only a carcass far advanced in putrefaction that awaited me here, might already 

 have been concluded from the circumstance of its having been found floating ; for all smaller 

 Cetaceans sink immediately after death, and their dead bodies, like those of other annuals 

 generally, do not rise to the surface, until lifted by the various kinds of gas developed during putre- 

 faction ; but, for the last minutes of our drive, the stench meeting us, gave us every reason to fear 

 that an anatomical examination, properly so called, would be intolerable, if not impossible. 

 On our arrival, however, we saw that not only the outward form of the whole animal, but 

 even the different colours of its skin had been extremely well preserved, and however disagreeable 

 the task might be in the heat of summer, yet I could not omit to examine and measure the body 

 as exactly as possible, and then begin immediately to work out the skeleton with the bones in 

 their natural connection. 



It was a killer, Deljohinus orca, L., that lay before me with the belly and part of the left 



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