rOHETGN INTELLIGE>^CE. 
101 
some remains of a sailor. A fine species of zipliioid cetacean known to 
science under the name of Delplunorhyncus niicropterus, or oftener as 
Mesoplodon Sowerbiensis, 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 iUustrious co7ifrere M. du Mortier.* . . . Another species of the 
family of Ziphioids, which visits reguhirly the Feroe Isles, shows itself 
sometimes on our coasts. An individual was taken some years since, at 
Bergoluis, near Zierickzee, and described by M. WesmaeLf It is the 
Dogling, or the Hyperoodon of naturalists. A Avbole band was lost last year 
after bad weather on the coast of Jutland. 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 
pi'oper 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 tlie Sound in the pursuit 
of herrings, and the}^ 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 quarters in the Baltic. 
We do not dwell on the whales in ancient times stranded in our latitudes. 
There is too much exaggeration 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, ' Meiaoire sur le Delphi norliynque microptere echoue a Ostende,' 
Bruxellcs, 1S39, in Mem. de r.\cadeinie Royalo de BnixcUes, t. xii. 
t Wesmael, ]\Icmoires de rAcademie Royale de Bruxelles, t. xiii., 1840. This skele- 
ton is deposited in the Brussels ;Mii5eum. 
% Esckricht, Coinptes Keadus de I'Acad^mie dcs Sciences, sitting of July 12th, 
1858. 
§ In 1189 a whale of extraordinary size was stranded at Blanltenberghe ; * in 1334 
the fishermen of Ostend took a marine monster of forty feet in leiigth.f But the most 
extraordinary fact is that in the winter of 1404 eight whales, mostly of seventy feet in 
length, were thrown ou 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 Arabroise Pare : § the other at Berchey, in Holland, and de- 
scribed by Clusius, 11 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 " blauc 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. 
X Guicciardini, Descritt. di tutti i Paesi Bassi, fogl. 331, ed. de Plautin, 1588, in-fol. 
§ Ambroise Pare, 25e livre de ses CEuvres. 
II Clusius in 1605. 
^ Cuvier, Ossem., vol. v. p. 329. 
** ' Nederlandsche Oorlogen/ 31te boek, fol. 6, 4te deeL 
