Description

Broadside advertising an exhibition of the Ostend Whale in Charing Cross. Text is entitled "Pavilion of the Gigantic Whale, Charing Cross" and informs the reader that the "Proprietor of this cetaceous Animal" has made his pavilion "OPEN DAILY (Sundays excepted), from TEN o'CLOCK in the MORNING till DUSK." It continues by describing how the Ostend whale was found and brought to land, and then gives the dimensions and weights of the whale and its parts. The broadside concludes with the following remark, "The upper jaw was fitted up with 800 fanons or whalebones, and from the calculations made by Monsieur le Baron Cuvier and the Professors of the King's Garden in Paris, this enormous animal must have lived from 900 to 1000 years--the cartilages of the fingers of the fins being quite ossified."