160 ESCHRICHT ON THE 



stripped of their skins during digestion ; it is also not less distinctly demonstrated that the 

 skins are disgorged,^ even pretty soon after the swallowing, by the circumstance that only slight 

 traces of flayed skins were to be found in the stomach itself, whereas a whole skin, still partly 

 covered with hairs, was hanging out between the teeth of the animal. That the greater part, by 

 far, of the bones are digested in the stomach of the killer, as is the case in most other beasts of 

 prey, is fully confirmed by the great quantity of cleaned porpoise-bones found in it, in a more or 

 less decomposed state ; the skin remaining in the throat served also pretty well, in more than one 

 respect, to show when and how the animals swallowed, are flayed in the stomach. By the great 

 number of hairs still fixed in their places it might be inferred that the flaying takes place shortly 

 after the skin has become loose during dissolution, and by the manner in which it was turned 

 inside out, it will be perceived that the flayed bodies are pushed out of the skin by the well-known 

 very powerful motions of the walls of the stomach during digestion, through the rent produced at 

 the capture of the animal, by which means, however, the head and the paws may sometimes be 

 torn off, and remain in it. No fish-bones were found in this instance, a case, we suppose, of rare 

 occurrence, for not only did Professor Nilsson find very many salmon-bones in his specimen, but 

 Professor Mulder" discovered also a number of bones of Maia clavata in a specimen stranded 

 on the coast of Holland, April 15th, 1832. That, generally speaking, the killers, to a very great 

 extent, live on the larger kind of fish has for a long time been generally acknowledged. 



While the examination of the contents of the stomach was thus going on, and as it was 

 already beginning to get dark, the whole length of the intestines had also been cut out ; they 

 were now stretched out on the beach, and found to measure 177 feet 8 inches, thus having more 

 than eight times the length of the animal, which is even longer than what is generally found in 

 Cetaceans. 



Mr. Benzon's men watched the whole night the parts laid aside and the skeleton, now 

 tolerably well cleaned, though still requiring a couple of days' work from my assistant, whom I 

 had brought with me, before we could hope that it would be received on board the Copenhagen 

 steamer. 



It had been a most fatiguing day to all of us ; and having spent so many hours in the 

 immediate neighbourhood of the putrid carcass of the Cetacean, it cannot be denied but that 

 both I and my assistant felt very ill ; we soon, however, got the better of this indisposition 

 through the I'are hospitality which we were allowed to enjoy for the two following days on the 

 estate of Mr. Benzon. 



It has, from times of old, been the common assertion of sailors and inhabitants of shores, 



^ That the empty skins are disgorged by the killers seems to have been observed, once at 

 least, in ancient times, though the fact was not correctly interpreted. For when we are told by Pliny 

 (lib. ix, caps. 5 and 6) that the Orca, which in his time was shut up in the harbour of Ostia, where it 

 was attacked and killed by the Emperor Claudius, had been tempted into that part of the sea by the 

 wrecking of a ship laden with hides, on which it had been feeding for several days, we can hardly 

 explain this singular opinion of his in any better way than by the conjecture that the animal had been 

 seen to vomit empty skins during its incarceration in the harbour. On this supposition all doubt of its 

 having really been an orca, and not a cachalot, would be removed, as the latter is not known to feed 

 on warm-blooded animals, swallowing them skins and all. 



^ 'Leeuwarder Courant,' 1833, Nos. 31, 32, 43, 45, and 47. 



