PSEUDORCÅ CRÅSSIDENS. 



Female, sixteen feet in length ; killed in the Bay of Kiel, November 24th, 18G1.' 



In the course of the summer of 1862, three specimens of a large and, in several respects, 

 remarkable dolphin were thrown dead on the shores of the Danish islands of Sealand and 

 Funen. As chance would have it, my first information was about the one that had last been drifted 

 ashore ; and as the measures taken by me to endeavour to procure some parts of this animal for 

 the Zoological Museum caused me to become acquainted with the individuals which were stranded 

 at an earlier date, I shall begin my account with this specimen. 



On the 14th of August, 1862, the local newspaper of Kallundborg, a town on the north- 

 western coast of Sealand, contained the intelligence, which from thence found its way into several 

 of the newspapers of Copenhagen, that a Cetacean said to have been eight or nine ells long had 

 several days before been thrown up dead in the neighbourhood on the southern beach of Asnæs, 

 a small tongue of land belonging to the estates of Count Lerche, of Lerchenborg. The short 

 account contained nothing in reference to the colour or appearance of the animal ; but judging 

 from the statement about its size, I supposed that it was most probably an Orca (a so-called 

 " Sværdfisk" or " Spækhugger," or killer), an animal, therefore, tolerably well known ; and 

 as, moreover, there was very little chance of my arriving in time to profit much by a journey 

 to the place where it had been stranded, several days having already elapsed since the occur- 

 rence, I thought it not worth while to go. Some three weeks afterwards, however, a tooth 

 was shown to me, which had been found lying beside the dead body, and was brought to Copen- 



^ [This figure (taken from a photograph) is not in the original memoir. — W. H. F.] 



