Abstract
THE services which H.S.H. the Prince of Monaco has rendered to the science of oceanography, during the last ten or twelve years, are familiar to every one interested in that department of research. First in the small schooner Hirondelle, with no power but the strong arms of his Breton crew, and later, in the large and perfectly equipped auxiliary steam yacht Princesse Alice, there is no branch of the science which has not been enriched by his enlightened enterprise and his unwearied perseverance. It may be interesting to the readers of NATURE to know something of what was achieved in the summer cruise of 1895 in the waters of the North Atlantic, chiefly in the vicinity of the Azores. The dredging and other deep-sea operations conducted on board the yacht herself were very successful, and produced an abundant harvest. The most interesting result of the cruise, however, was due to the lucky chance of a cachalot or sperm whale being pursued by the whale-fishers of Terceira, and killed almost under the bows of the Princesse Alice, and to the prompt measures taken by the Prince to utilise this rare opportunity, the importance of which for science he immediately and intuitively perceived. The preliminary reports of the investigation of the material thus collected by the Prince, in collaboration with the Portuguese whalers, go to show that an almost entirely new and unsuspected animal kingdom has been opened to the zoologist.
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BUCHANAN, J. The Sperm Whale and its Food. Nature 53, 223–225 (1896). https://doi.org/10.1038/053223f0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/053223f0