FOEEIGN IJs^TELLIGE^ICE. 



103 



honour of havinsf recosjnized the remains of these great aninjals is carried 

 back to a learned physician of Antwerp in the seventeenth century, Goro- 

 piu3 Becanus.* 



" At the end of the last century, the Baron von Hupsch wrote upon this 

 subject a very curious work.f But it is, above all, to Cuvier we owe the 

 mos*^. remarkable work on the fossil bones of Antwerp. The i^reat natu- 

 ralist of the Museum had received at Paris many which had beenexhmned 

 at the time of the excavation of the Basin of Commerce, in the reign of 

 the First Napoleon.! 



" Some years ago fossil bones of cetaceans were found in great numbers 

 in other localities, — the Crns: Sea seemingly having had a much more con- 

 siderable extension than had been previously thought. In Holland, in the 

 province of Gueldres, bones have been found exactly as at Antwerp ; and 

 moreover a portion of a cranium, wliich recently came from tlie Baltic, § 

 appears to have belonged to an animal that had a great analogy to our 

 Plesiocefes. Similar bones have also been dug up in Eussia, and described 

 under the name of Cetotherium.\\ 



" A phenomenon of another kind, but equally worthy of remark, is a 

 skeleton of a baleinoptera found in England, in the diluvium, at twenty- 

 eight feet above the present high-water ; and another discovered in Nor- 

 waj^ near Fredericstadt, at 250 feet above the present level of the seas 



" In spite of these inherent difficulties in the stud}^ of the fossil remains 

 of cetacea, we have succeeded, however, in determining the greatest num- 

 ber. We have attained to reconstituting some of them tolerably com- 

 pletely. 



" In the first place, then, we have found out that the great species of 

 baleinides, or cetaceans Avith wlialebones, had then many representatives. 

 Some weeks since, an entire head of one of these great animals was ex- 

 posed, but, unfortunately for science, it could not be preserved. We 

 possess in great number the vertebrae of these whales from all parts of the 

 body ; fragments of ribs and of limbs — comprising the shoulder-blade ; 

 many portions of the cranium ; the inferior maxillaries, nearly perfect ; 

 and, above all, the t3^mpanic bones. 



" But the family which is most richly represented in that ancient sea was 

 the Ziphioides. We see them of all sizes. Of these we have, first, an 

 animal near to the caclialots of the present day, and of dimensions equally 

 gigantic. Another offers all the characters of the existing Hyperoodon ; 

 then we find nimierous teeth singularly constituted, which we attribute to 

 Zipliioides allied to Dioplodon and Mesoplodon. Lastly, some truly dwarf 

 species complete this curious family, and certainly these did not exceed in 

 size the smallest dolphins of the present creation. 



" The Cetodonts, or the cetacea with teeth, had also many other repre- 

 sentatives, approaching most nearly to the long-nosed species of the tropi- 

 cal regions. Two fine heads have been discovered at Yieux-Dieu, the per- 

 fect preservation of which is due to the intelligent and active care of the 



* Goropius Becauus, ' Orig. Antwerp.' 



t ' Beschreibmig eiiiiger neu entdeckten Versteiiiten.' 



X Cuvier, 'Osseinents Fossiles,' t. v., premiere partie, p. 352 (4to edit.). 



§ Hensche and Hagen, ' Ueber einen auf der kurischea Nehrung bei Niddeu gefundenen 

 Knocheu,' Schritt. der Ph,ys. CEcon. Gesells. iu Kouigsberg, Jahr i., Heft ii. He gives a 

 list of the cetaceans stranded in the Baltic, and notices several fossil cetaceans. 



11 Eichwald, 'Die Urwelt Kussland's/ St. Petersburg, 1840, livr. Ire, p. 25 ; Brandt, 

 Institut, 1843, No. 205 et No. 449. Nordmann, ' Palaontologie Sued-Russl^uds.' The 

 last is in course of publication. 



** ' Stadstrath Hensche,' loc. cit. page 7. 



