honour of having recognized the remains of these great animals is carried back to a learned physician of Antwerp in the seventeenth century, Goropius Becanus.[1]
"At the end of the last century, the Baron von Hupsch wrote upon this subject a very curious work.[2] But it is, above all, to Cuvier we owe the most remarkable work on the fossil bones of Antwerp. The great naturalist of the Museum had received at Paris many which had been exhumed at the time of the excavation of the Basin of Commerce, in the reign of the First Napoleon.[3]
"Some years ago fossil bones of cetaceans were found in great numbers in other localities,—the Crag Sea seemingly having had a much more considerable 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, which recently came from the Baltic,[4] appears to have belonged to an animal that had a great analogy to our Plesiocetes. Similar bones have also been dug up in Russia, and described under the name of Cetotherium.[5]
"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 Norway, near Fredericstadt, at 250 feet above the present level of the seas.[6]
"In spite of these inherent difficulties in the study of the fossil remains of cetacea, we have succeeded, however, in determining the greatest number. We have attained to reconstituting some of them tolerably completely.
"In the first place, then, we have found out that the great species of baleinides, or cetaceans with whalebones, had then many representatives. Some weeks since, an entire head of one of these great animals was exposed, but, unfortunately for science, it could not be preserved. We possess in great number the vertebræ 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 tympanic 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 cachalots of the present day, and of dimensions equally gigantic. Another offers all the characters of the existing Hyperoodon; then we find numerous teeth singularly constituted, which we attribute to Ziphioides 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 representatives, approaching most nearly to the long-nosed species of the tropical regions. Two fine heads have been discovered at Vieux-Dieu, the perfect preservation of which is due to the intelligent and active care of the
- ↑ Goropius Becanus, 'Orig. Antwerp.'
- ↑ 'Beschreibung einiger nen entdeckten Versteinten.'
- ↑ Cuvier, 'Ossements Fossiles,' t. v., première partie, p. 352 (4to edit.).
- ↑ Hensche and Hagen, 'Ueber einen auf der kurischen Nehrung bei Niddeu gefundenen Knochen,' Schrift. der Phys. Œcon. Gesells. in Königsberg, Jahr i., Heft ii. He gives a list of the cetaceans stranded in the Baltic, and notices several fossil cetaceans.
- ↑ Eichwald, 'Die Urwelt Russland's,' St. Petersburg, 1840, livr. 1re, p. 25; Brandt, Institut, 1843, No. 205 et No. 449. Nordmann, 'Paläontologie Sued-Russlands.' The last is in course of publication.
- ↑ 'Stadstrath Hensche,' loc. cit. page 7.
