Hearing a rumour that it was likely to be buried, I sent down for it immediately, and rescued it from premature interment. It however smelt so dreadfully that my boy John had some difficulty to persuade fhe guard to accept it in the train, and the omnibus conductor positively refused him a passage. The pike’s measurements were as follows:—Length from nose to top of tail 3 feet 10 inches; girth behind head 1 foot 8 inches 5 in middle of back 1 foot 7 inches; breadth of tail 7 inches; teeth nearly 1 inch in length. He had been probably dead some three or four days. Mr. Macdonald thinks he was thirty years of age. My scales gave his weight twenty-six pounds and a half, but the fish had lost much by drying, I managed, by the aid of Condy’s disinfecting fluid, to sweeten the fish a little bit, and before one o’clock that morning made a capital mould of him. I then buried him in the coals in the cellar until the morning, for I find coals to be a capital disinfectant.

I next morning cut his head off, which is being dried as a companion to my 201b. cod, and buried his body. The

stomach was entirely empty, and I could find no cause for death whatever. It is not impossible, therefore, that old age was the cause of its decease. A cast of this “ dray horse ” fish is now in my museum at the Horticultural.

Pages 196, 206, 254, 308. I have added so much new matter to the text of this second edition that I regret I cannot find space for these notes.

ANATOMY OF THE POEPOISE.-~Vol. I. Page 322.

The proper way to dissect an animal is to start with the preconceived idea that you are about to examine an intricate animal machine, the composition of which, although bone, flesh, and blood, is so wonderfully and admirably put together that human art cannot equal, and certainly not excel it—that it meets most perfectly all the conditions of life, whether on dry land, water, or mid-air, in which the creature passes its existence.

In the porpoise we have a capital and really wonderful example of the power of nature, and the beauty with which she is enabled to solve the most difficult questions of complicated mechanics. In order rightly to understand this point, we should consider a task such as the following placed before us:—“ You are required to construct an animal which shall be warm-blooded, have lungs, and a four-cavitied heart. It shall be strictly mammalian both as to skeleton and internal organs, especially of respiration. This animal is to be born in the ocean, and to live in the ocean all its life. Send in your plans and drawings showing how you propose to adapt a mammalian structure to the ordinary conditions of a fish’s existence, and especially demonstrate how you would conform the nostril so that not a particle of air should ever, at any time, enter the lungs. The

animal shall never, for a moment of its life, be out of water, in a more or less turbulent condition; yet so contrive that not a drop of water shall ever get into or near the lungs.” I think this would be a puzzler for most of our engineers.

See how beautifully nature has met the required conditions. In the first place, the bones of the porpoise are not firm and hard; the mineral matter is not in excess, as in the hard bones of birds, but oil takes its place; the bones are not soldered tightly and firmly together, they are in every way elastic—in fact, the beast is always carried on elastic springs in the water.

It is one of the laws of nature that all mammalia should have seven bones in the neck (cervical vertebrae)—man haa seven—the long-necked giraffe seven—the horse seven—the camel seven—the porpoise and the whale seven. The long and supple neck is of great service to the giraffe and camel, but a long neck would be much in the way in the case ot the porpoise; he needs only a short neck for his mode of life. Nature will, nevertheless, not break her law. In the giraffe the seven cervical vertebrae attain their maximum of length; in the porpoise they are diminished to their minimum. My animal was 44 inches long, yet his neck measured but half an inch; the first bone, which supports the head, is wide enough for its work, but the others are all compressed together, somewhat like a number of small saucers placed one upon the other.

Now what must be done about the four extremities P A porpoise must not have a hoof like a horse, a wing like a bird, nor yet a fin like a fish; remark the compromise between the three. When we see the live porpoise in the water, we observe that his mode of progression is by two paddles in front and one paddle behind. The front paddles externally look like fins; but dissect off the skin, and you will find underneath, four regular fingers and one thumb, a wrist-joint, two bones of the fore-arm, one of the arm proper, and a well-formed blade-bone. These fingers are outspread, like a man’s hand uplifted in a state of wonder;

and they have all, as it were, been set fast in one solid glove formed of the skin proper. Thus they can never act independently, but working together in one plane, and shut up in a skin case, form a most excellently-working water-paddle. The porpoise has no hind legs; they would be of no use to him. In the “ Talking Fish,” or seal, the hind legs and tail are united, so as to form a capital swimming flap. In the porpoise all the progressive motion proceeds from the tail. This tail is not fastened on like a fish’s tail, but at right angles to the body and not parallel with it. Its mode of working is obvious: the porpoise must come frequently to the surface to get air; a single flap of the tail will bring his nose up to the surface from a very great depth.

Now we come to the most difficult problem of all, viz., how to prevent this mammalian air-breathing animal from being every minute of his life liable to death by drowning, and a most beautiful bit of mechanism we have before us. A porpoise has been most appropriately called a “ sea-pig ” “ hog-fish; ” his carcase is like that of a fat bacon pig.—a We will, therefore, take a pig’s skull, and make our comparison. In the pig, the nostrils run along the whole length of the bones of the nose; in the porpoise this hole is soldered up, the upper jaw is quite solid, and (with the under jaw) is devoted entirely to the purpose of catching his food.

If we take a pig’s skull, and bore a hole, curving backwards from the top of the skull down to the palate, and turn up the windpipe into this hole so that it shall come out at the top of the head, we have a model of what we actually find in the porpoise. Upon making a section of the skull of a porpoise, we shall find a curved hole through its substance; the windpipe ends (by the larynx) in this hole, and does not prolong itself into the upper jaw at all. The larynx, or Adam’s apple, also is very peculiar in shape; it is elongated like a human finger, and fits accurately the hole in which it works. So far, so good. Now, then, contrive your valve which shall never allow water to enter into this windpipe. In

,150 SPOUTING APPARATUS OF PORPOISE.

the porpoise there is a valve in the skin, on the top of the head. This opening is crescent-shape, the crescent being directed forwards. The valve is opened by the animal when it wishes to breathe, and it is closed again instantly (like the valve at the bottom of a pair of bellows when being worked) after the respiration has ceased. Passing the finger into this valve, we find two passages, and these are the two nostrils; but the finger cannot pass easily into them, because there are two prominences which pass, “like the bolt of a double-lock,” right across the nostril into cavities on the other side, in which they fit accurately. In fact, we have in this apparatus the combination of the conical stopper of a wine-decanter with the action of the bolts of a door-lock. But a drop of water may possibly get through the “ bellows valve ” at the top of the head, and it might trickle down into the lungs. The water, however, soon finds that “the double-actioned valve stops the way.” Supposing this should happen when the porpoise is deep down in the water, the intruding water must consequently wait somewhere or other till it can be expelled. We find, therefore, above the point where the obstruction exists, two large pouches, which, when distended, are as large as oranges ) into these pouches, therefore, the water must go, and there it waits till the porpoise comes to the surface, when—whish—in a moment the internal valves give way, and out come air and water together in that wonderful “spout” which we hear of from sea-going friends as coming from the “ blow-hole.”

But, say you, the water may get down his mouth, and so into the larynx. I beg your pardon—nature is up to that \ for even were the porpoise to swallow water, the level of the top of the windpipe is about half way up the head, and well above any water that can come into the mouth. The soft palate moreover hangs down like a curtain at the back of the mouth, and so shuts off all communication, unless the beast wishes to raise it and let the food go down. This

palate, even, lias a hole in it, through which the windpipe plays, and a compressing muscle surrounds the hole, so that any water coming in that way would be ordered off the premises in a moment. In the gigantic elephant we see the nose prolonged to a marvellous degree, so as to form an organ of prehension as well as of breathing. In the porpoise this same nose assumes a totally different form; it becomes tc snubbed,” and is made to form a valve most complex in its structure, yet most simple in its working. It works day and night, summer and winter—when the sea is as smooth as glass, and when the tempest drives the terrific storm-waves before it never ceases the guardianship of the life of itsit—yet owner; it never flags, it never tires. Shall we not pause in our hurried career through life and contemplate such an admirable instance of the power of Him who, when the earth was as yet young, u created great whales and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly?”*

FISHING FOE POEPOISES.-Vol. I. Page 322.

I have often thought what capital fim it would be if we could manage to hook a lively sea-pig with a hook and running tackle; for as seen in my experiment, he will snap at a bait made to spin nicely, and I cannot help fancying that if one were to rig up tackle on a somewhat larger scale, and the bait were judiciously trailed near the beast, he might be inclined to take it; I throw out the hint for yachtsmen; it is worth while trying, if only for the fun of the thing. The line should, I think, be coiled up in a barrel, so that it would run out easily, according to the plan adopted by whale fishermen in the Arctic Sea. I now give some correspondence which took place on this subject. * Mr. Bartlett tells me that besides the porpoises mentioned in this book, he has received five others at the gardens; none lived more than seven days. I should like to try one in the Serpentine.

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