FOliETGN INTELLIGE^^CE. 



101 



some remains of a sailor. A fine species of ziphioid cetacean known to 

 science nucler the name of Delpliinorliyncus micropteriis, or oftener as 

 Mesoplodon Sowerhiensis, was stranded some years since near the port of 

 Ostend. It still uttered groans when M. Paret, the naturalist of Slykens, 

 arrived on the spot. This animal, rare everywhere, and of which but one 

 complete skeleton was known, has furnished the subject of a fine memoir 

 by our illustrious confrere M. du Mortier.* . . . Another species of the 

 family of Ziphioids, which visits resjularl}^ the Feroe Isles, shows itself 

 sometimes on our coasts. An individual was taken some years since, at 

 Bergoluis, near Zierickzee, and described by M. Wesmael.f It is the 

 Doglincr, or the Hyperoodon of naturalists; A whole band was lost last year 

 after bad weather on the coast of J utland. It is this family of cetaceans 

 which was most largely represented in the Crag Sea, and on this score it 

 interests us in an especial manner. The porpoise is the only cetacean 

 proper to our littoral ; and we are still ignorant if it be sedentary during 

 the whole year on our coasts, or if it visits regularly other latitudes. Every 

 year at spring-time porpoises enter the Baltic by the Sound in the pursuit 

 of herrings, and they only go out again in December and January by the 

 Little Belt, between Fionie and Jutland.;]; As we find them on our coasts 

 oftener in summer than in winter, it is evident that our common cetacean 

 does not belong to those which take up their summer cjuarters in the Baltic. 



" We do not dwell on the whales in ancient times stranded in our latitudes. 

 There is too much exciggeration in the statements of authors. 



" We shall only mention the cachelot or potwall, which has appeared 

 several times some centuries ago in our latitudes, and of which Ambroise 

 Pare has given a very recognizable figure. § 



* B. C. du ;Mortier, ' Memoire sur le Delphinoi-'nynqile microptere echoue aOstende,' 

 Bruxelles, 1839, in Mem. de rAculcinie Royale A'i Braxi'lles, t. xii. 



t Wesmael, Memoires de TAcadeinie Royale de Bruxelles, t. xiii., 1840. This skele- 

 ton is deposited in the Brussels Museum, 



X Eschricht, Comptes Readus de 1' Academic des Scieaces, sitting of July 12th, 

 1858. 



§ In 1189 a whale of extraordinary size was stranded at Blankenberghe ; * in ISS^ 

 the fishermen of Ostend took a marine monster of forty feet in length. t But the most 

 extraordinary fact is that in the winter of 1404 eight whales, mostly of seventy feet in 

 length, were thrown on the flat sandy shore near Ostend by a tempestuous sea, and taken 

 nearly all alive. :|: That which appears least doubtful, and here the species is indicated, 

 is that in 1577 and 1598 two potwalls were cast ashore: one in the Scheldt, near 

 Antwerp, and figured by Ambroise Pare ; § the other at Berchey, in Holland, and de- 

 scribed by Clusius, II who first figured this animal. He had seen the one stranded at 

 Berchey in 1598, and another at Beverwyck in 1601 ; the former fifty-three feet long. 

 Albert, on the authority of Cetns, speaks of two cachelots stranded in his time; one in 

 Friesland, the other near Utrecht ; and knew the spermaceti, or " blanc de baleine." The 

 ancients do not mention it, and probably did not know the animal which produced it.^ 

 Piet Bor** makes mention of an infernal monster of eighty feet, stranded on the 1st of 

 May at the Sluysche Gat, and which doubtless belonged also to the cachelots. This calls 

 to my mind a band of thirteen young individuals, if I do not err, which lost themselves 

 some years ago at the end of the Adriatic, and of which one head is preserved in the 

 Museum of the University of Berlin. 



* Montanus, Add. ad Histor. Guicciard., p. 150, ed. Amsterdam, 1646, fol. 

 t 'Delices des Pays-Bas,' t. iii. p. 15, 2d edit. 



% Guicciardini, Descritt. di tutti i Paesi Bassi, fogl. 331, ed. de Plautin, 1588, in-fol. 



§ Ambroise Pare, 25e hvre de ses (Euvres. 



II Clusius in 1605. 



^ Cuvier, Ossem., vol. v. p. 329. 



** ' Nederlandsche Oorlogen,' Site boek, fol. 6, 4te deeL 



