100 



THE GEOLOG-rST. 



and which, prepared as a skeleton with much care by M. Paret, after having 

 visited during twenty years the principal towns of Europe, continues at the 

 present time, it appears, its peregrinations in the New World. It is the 

 Fterohalcena gigas. The other balenoptera belongs to the small species, 

 which does not exceed thirty feet in length, and which has always forty- 

 eight vei'tebrse ; it is the 'Pterohalcend minor of Knox, or the JPterohalcBna 

 Tostrata of Fabricius.* The skeleton preserved in the Zoological Garden 

 of Antwerp belonged to an individual stranded on the coast of Holland, 

 and is of a third species, the Pterohalcena communis.^ 



" The Academy will remember that we entertained it three years ago 

 with the Dolphin Glohiceps, found dead at sea by the fishermen of Heyst 

 under very interesting circumstances. It was a mother, which at first 

 they had taken for a barrel, and which was on the point of going down. J 



" It is the same animal which the Feroe islanders look out for every 

 year with such great anxiety, and whose flesh is esteemed by them a de- 

 licious dish.§ The GrindewcM — for that is the name they give them — 

 make their appeara.nce in these isles with the thrushes and woodcocks else- 

 where ; with this difference, that the thrushes and woodcocks figure only 

 on the tables of the rich, whilst the flesh of the grindewahl is the food 

 of the poor. It is by thousands that they are taken every year ; and one 

 of the most curious spectacles which can be given to a sovereign is a fishery 

 of the grindewahl in one of the fiords of Feroe, made in the presence of the 

 King of Denmark when he visits these isles. But the most formidable of 

 the cetaceans which visit our latitudes is the orca, or ork. We see it 

 from time to time on our coasts. Two individuals of this dangerous spe- 

 cies, a young and an adult female, were stranded in 1843-44 near Ostend, 

 and an adult female was found dead on the strand in 1848. The ork is by 

 far the most formidable of all the great marine animals ; the colossal 

 v/hale, even, is not exempt from liis vigorous attacks ; it is truly the con- 

 sternation of all. Nothing is more curious than to listen to the tales of the 

 fishermen of G-reenland and Spitzbergen of the habits of these marine mon- 

 sters. What violence in the struggle, what tenacity in the attack ! One 

 would think one was listening to the recitals of travellers in the deserts of 

 Africa, narrating the gigantic struggles of the great mammifers, the ter- 

 rible assaults made by the lions and tigers on the elephants, the buffalos, 

 or antelopes. The first of August of this year, a fine male lost itself on the 

 coast of Jutland. Intelligence w^as sent immediately to Copenhagen, and 

 Professor Eschricht made his way to the place. He wished to know above 

 all on what this animal had fed during its last hours ; and he soon disco- 

 vered that not without reason the ork is the terror of the seas. It con- 

 tained in its stomach (one would hardly have supposed it) thirteen por- 

 poises and fifteen seals ! My learned friend searched with a feeling of 

 horror whether amongst this frightful mass of victims he could not find 



* This species comes regularly ashore on the coast of Norway. Near Bergen, they 

 take them every year. Fahricius knew it well in Greenland, hut he erred in giving it 

 the name proposed by Linnaeus, who did not know the whales. This example shows 

 that it is not always the name of the first author which ought to be preserved. There 

 exists a skeli ton of this species iu the Royal ^luseum of Brnssels ; another, of a young 

 iudividual stranded at Ostend, is in the Cabinet of the University of Ghent ; and a third^, 

 from (b-ccnland, formed a long time ago part of the collection of the Cathohc University 

 of Louvaiu. 



t Bulletin de rAcadiMuie, t. >;xiv., No. 3. 



+ ' Kecherches suv la Faune litioralo dc Belgique (Cetaces).' Mem. de I'Acad. Roy. 

 dc Belgique, t. xxxii. 



§ Comptcs Rendus, t. xlvii., July 1:2, 1858. 



