英语听书《白鲸记》第870期

Among the more curious of such remains is part of a skull, which in the year 1779 was disinterred in the Rue Dauphine in Paris, a short street opening almost directly upon the palace of the Tuileries; and bones disinterred in excavating the great docks of Antwerp, in Napoleon's time. Cuvier pronounced these fragments to have belonged to some utterly unknown Leviathanic species.

在这些遗物中最为希奇的是，一七七九年在巴黎的多芬纳路发掘出了一块头壳（多芬纳路是一条差不多直通向杜依勒利宫（杜依勒利宫——一五六六年法国叶卡特琳娜·德·美第奇王后所选定而建造的皇宫，法国大革命时被烧毁。）的小街）；以及在拿破仑时代，在挖安特卫普（安特卫普——比利时北部一个工商业大城，一七九四年为法国所陷，拿破仑于一八零三年想将其构成一个商业和军事基地以抗英国，特投资二百万镑构造新码头。）大码头时所发现的骨头。居维埃宣称这些断片都应该属于一种绝对弄不清楚的鲸类。

But by far the most wonderful of all Cetacean relics was the almost complete vast skeleton of an extinct monster, found in the year 1842, on the plantation of Judge Creagh, in Alabama. The awe-stricken credulous slaves in the vicinity took it for the bones of one of the fallen angels. The Alabama doctors declared it a huge reptile, and bestowed upon it the name of Basilosaurus. But some specimen bones of it being taken across the sea to Owen, the English Anatomist, it turned out that this alleged reptile was a whale, though of a departed species. A significant illustration of the fact, again and again repeated in this book, that the skeleton of the whale furnishes but little clue to the shape of his fully invested body. So Owen rechristened the monster Zeuglodon; and in his paper read before the London Geological Society, pronounced it, in substance, one of the most extraordinary creatures which the mutations of the globe have blotted out of existence.

但是，在这些鲸类遗物中最为奇怪的是，一八四二年在亚拉巴马州克雷法官农场上所发现的一只远古的巨兽的差不多是完整的骷髅。附近那些吓得要命的朴实的黑奴，竟把它当成是天上下降的天使的尸骨。亚拉巴马的医生都一致说它是一只大爬虫类，还给它取上一个名字：巴西洛梭鲁斯（巴西洛梭鲁斯——据说是美国一个叫做哈兰医生对发现于北美、新西兰、欧洲以及埃及等地的化石巨兽所下的名称（作者所指大约就是哈兰等医生），后被欧文称为鲸类化石，作者以下所述都是事实。）。但是，等到把一些骨头标本，横渡大西洋送到英国那位解剖学家欧文那里去后，却发现这所谓爬虫的东西原来就是大鲸，虽然这是早已湮没的一种鲸类。这一意义重大的例证已在本书中一再说过了，就是认为鲸骷髅是跟它原来的形体毫不相同的。因此，欧文又把这巨兽另行命名为宙格洛东，而且当他在伦敦地质学会上宣读他的论文时，还宣称它实际上就是由于地球的变化，目前已经湮没的一种最非凡的动物。

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