193 REINHARDT ON 



hagen by Mr. Rorbye, a medical student, who, while passing his vacation in the neiglibonrliood of 

 Asnæs, had gone to see the dolphin a short time after it had been thrown up on the beach. The 

 sight of the tooth immediately convinced me that the stranded Cetacean could not belong to any 

 of our species of Orca, but that it must be an animal of which it was important to save even 

 any fragments and detached pieces, and being told at the same time that Count Lerche had 

 caused the carcass to be buried, I applied to him, with a request that the body might be 

 disinterred, so that the bones might be put together to form a skeleton as complete as circum- 

 stances would admit of. On arriving at Lerchenborg, I was received most kindly by Count 

 Lerche, who afforded me all the assistance I wanted; but the more accm-ate accounts I 

 now received at the place itself, I regret to say, in no slight degree diminished the hopes on 

 which my visit was founded. The dolphin had, indeed, been interred, but for the purpose of its 

 being employed as manure, and on account of its considerable weight, and with a view of ren- 

 dering the work easier, it had first been hewn into many pieces, which then had been spread over 

 rather a large piece of ground, where it would be difficult to find them agaiu. At the same 

 time, however, it was some comfort to me to hear that (as I had rightly concluded) it would not 

 have availed much if I had set out somewhat eariier, for the dolphin had been found on 

 the 9th of August, and had already been cut to pieces on the 11th of the same month, 

 several days before the news of its stranding had reached Copenhagen, and the chopping had 

 been carried out so unsparingly, that the head itself had been divided in the middle, and many of 

 the vertebrae had been split. It soon became evident to me that I must give up the hope of 

 collecting fragments enough for forming a tolerably complete skeleton, but, thanks to the assist- 

 ance given to me, I succeeded, nevertheless, in finding the most important parts, and among 

 these more especially the fragments of the cranium, the cervical vertebrae, the scapulæ, the 

 bones of the arms and some vertebræ. But as to the verbal information I tried to elicit from 

 those who had seen the animal, as it lay upon the shore, I was not particularly successful; 

 the only thing I could learn with tolerable certainty was, that it was a female nineteen feet long — 

 a little longer, therefore, than it had originally been stated to be. But as to its appearance and 

 colour, the statements were contradictory. 



Thus, while the information about this individual remained in an unsatisfactory state, I 

 received during my stay at Lerchenborg another valuable piece of intelligence — that some time 

 before another great dolphin had been drifted dead on the shoal, close to the shore near the light- 

 house of Refsnæs, some few miles from Asnæs ; that it had been saved, and that the carcass had 

 remained lying on the beach, the blubber having been cut off and melted into about ten gallons' 

 of oil. Circumstances did not permit me to go immediately from Asnæs to Refsnæs. I was 

 obliged to return to town first ; but having by renewed inquiries ascertained the trustworthiness 

 of the intelligence, and obtained such information as rendered it not improbable that it migVit oe 

 a dolphin of the same species as the one stranded at Asnæs, I accepted the hospitable invitation 

 of Mr. Earner, the owner of a farm in the neighbourhood, and early in October I went there 

 accompanied by the conservator of the museum. I found the animal, of which by far the greater 

 part of the flesh was still adhering to the bones, lying buried in the neighbourhood of the light- 

 house at the foot of tlie sand-hills on the sea-shore, and covered with sand ; to my satisfaction it 

 really proved to be of the same species as the dolphin stranded at Asnæs, though indeed a 

 smaller individual, being only about fourteen feet long ; and although it had been found as early as 

 the month of Jime (as I was told), or more than three months before, yet the putrefaction had 



