uncommon in this country. We have a notice
of the skeleton of the one which was found
dead, floating on the coast of Belgium, at the
distance of twelve miles from Ostend, on the
third of November, eighteen hundred and
thirty-seven. It was exhibited at Charing
Cross under the title of the pavilion of the
gigantic whale. This whale, it appears, was
ninety-five feet in length; its weight two
hundred and forty tons; quantity of oil
extracted from the blubber four thousand
gallons; weight of the rotten flesh buried in
the sand, eighty-five tons. The upper jaw
contained eight hundred fanons, or whalebones;
and, proceeding on the calculations made by
Monsieur le Baron Cuvier and the professors
of the King's Gardens in Paris, this enormous
animal must have lived from nine
hundred to one thousand years, the cartilages
of the fingers of the fins being quite ossified.
We ourselves never saw the whale, but a
gentleman— who, according to the charges
mentioned in the bill, must have paid two
shillings to inspect and sit inside the skeleton
— informs us that the whale had the gout,
for his fingers were all covered with chalk-stones.

We find another notice of a skeleton of a
whale that was exhibited in Gloucester Green,
Oxford, in the year eighteen hundred and
thirty-four. This specimen was taken at
Plymouth, in October eighteen hundred and
thirty-one; weighed four hundred and forty-eight
thousand pounds; length one hundred
and two feet; circumference seventy-five
feet. One hundred and fifty-two children
were within its mouth at one time, the roof
of which appears like an excavated rock
overhead. The children, probably, formed
a charity school, admitted by contract, and
then turned into use by the proprietor of the
whale, who wished to measure the capacity
of its mouth. Lucky it was for the hundred
and fifty-two children that the Whale had no
longer the power of shutting his jaws together,
for what a meal he might have made of them
like an ogre of old!

In May, eighteen hundred and thirty-seven,
the wonderful remains of an enormous head,
eighteen feet in length, seven feet in breadth,
and weighing one thousand seven hundred
pounds, was exhibited at the Cosmorama in
Regent Street. This turned out to be the
head of a large whale, recent, for the bones
were full of oil.

At the College of Surgeons there is an
enormous head of a whale (the bones only,
without the baleen). It would contain three
heads of the Whitechapel whale and an
infinity of children. This was the first head
ever seen in this country, and has been
described and figured by the great Baron
Cuvier himself. The form of the bones is
that of three bows, two placed on the ground
with their concave parts facing each other
(the lower jaws), the third being represented
by the upper jaw arching over them, its two
ends corresponding with the points where
the other bows touch one another. Hanging
upon the walls close by are other bones
of the whale— among them the ribs— which
at once determined us that the rib of the
Dun Cow at Warwick and the gigantic rib
at St. Mary Redcliff's Church at Bristol
were the bones of whales. There is also
suspended at the college a gigantic blade-bone,
with an anchor painted in gold on it, and
Calvert and Co.'s Entire underneath. This
bone, we were told, formed for half a century
the sign of a public-house at Portsmouth,
where they sold Calvert's beer. The blade-bones
of whales are not uncommonly seen at
the present day in the bone shops of London.
There is one now hanging at such a shop in
Hammersmith, and we have seen another in
a shop near the Vauxhall Road; they seem
placed, not for sale but to attract attention.
We have seen the bones of whales turned to
ornamental purposes. In the garden of a
lady at Abingdon the bones of the under-jaw
of a very large specimen are placed in the
form of an arch, at the end of a gravel-walk.
The ivy has grown over them, and they form
a very pretty object. In a garden at Clapham
we have seen one of the huge dorsal vertebræ
converted into a chair by being mounted on
three wooden legs; the broad part makes a
capital seat, and the projecting spines form
the back and sides of the chair.

In the tent where the Whitechapel whale
is exhibited, it cannot be denied that there
is a slight smell as of lamp-oil: which, however,
reminded us that from whales a substance
called ambergris is procured, which is
much used by the manufacturers of scents.
It is found floating on the sea, or cast ashore
by the waves. It is secreted by glands in
the intestines of the animal, and when in the
soft state answers some unknown purpose in
the process of digestion; it not unfrequently
becomes hardened into masses, and is in this
state expelled with the exuviæ. In lumps of
it sometimes are found the beaks of cuttle-fish
the whale has eaten and has not been
able to digest. At the College of Surgeons
is a fine specimen which even shows the
markings of the folds of the intestines where
it was secreted. In itself ambergris has
but little scent, but it has, we are informed,
the remarkable property of bringing out the
more delicate and finer aromas of other
scents, and for this purpose is principally
used. It bears a high market price, and in
consequence is frequently adulterated, so
that a pure genuine specimen is rare.

             THE MIDNIGHT BOAT.

  A BOAT comes down a deep broad stream;
  The white oars in the moonlight gleam;
  The drops a spray of silver seem.

  By wooded hills the stream is flowing;
  Through meadowy vales its steps are going,
  As if the fairest pathway knowing.