Histoire Naturelle des Cétacés des Mers d'Europe

Abstract

IT is fifty-three years since the veteran Professor of Zoology in the University of Louvain published his first paper on the Cetacea, entitled “Caractères spécifiques des grands Cétacés tirés de la conformation de l'oreile osseuse.” During the greater part of this long period he has made this group of animals especially his own, having industriously collected from every available source information upon them, which he has given to the world, not only in his great works on the osteology of the Cetacea and the fossil Cetacea of Antwerp, but also in a series of memoirs which have appeared from time to time in the publications of the Belgian Academy of Sciences. During the last three years the “Mémoires couronnés et autres Mémoires,” published by that learned body in octavo form, have contained a number of articles from his pen upon the Cetacea of the European seas, and it has been a happy idea of the author to collect these together, and republish them in a handy form, so as to render them accessible to many who would have difficulty in referring to them when scattered throughout the pages of the journal in which they first appeared. Histoire Naturelle des Cétacés des Mers d'Europe. By P. J. Van Beneden. Pp. 664. (Brussels: F. Hayez. 1889.)