some remains of a sailor. A fine species of ziphioid cetacean known to science under the name of Delphinorhyncus micropterus, 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 illustrious confrère M. du Mortier.[1] . . . Another species of the family of Ziphioids, which visits regularly 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.[2] It is the Dögling, or the Hyperoodon of naturalists. A whole 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 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.[3] 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 Paré has given a very recognizable figure.[4]
- ↑ B. C. du Mortier, 'Mémoire sur le Delphinorhynque microptère échoué à Ostende,' Bruxelles, 1839, in Mém. de l'Académie Royale de Bruxelles, t. xii.
- ↑ Wesmael, Mémoires de l'Académie Royale de Bruxelles, t. xiii., 1840. This skeleton is deposited in the Brussels Museum.
- ↑ Esckricht, Comptes Rendus de l'Académie des Sciences, sitting of July 12th, 1858.
- ↑ In 1189 a whale of extraordinary size was stranded at Blankenberghe;[5] in 1334 the fishermen of Ostend took a marine monster of forty feet in length.[6] 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.[7] 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 Paré;[8] the other at Berchey, in Holland, and described by Clusius,[9] 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 Cetus, 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.[10] Piet Bor[11] 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.
- ↑ 'Délices 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 Paré, 25e livre de ses Œuvres.
- ↑ Clusius in 1605.
- ↑ Cuvier, Ossem., vol. v. p. 329.
- ↑ 'Nederlandsche Oorlogen,' 31te boek, fol. 6, 4te deel.
