TRUMBULL CONCERNING DUBEETUS. 29 



In answer to a letter of inquiry from Professor Baird, Professor Truiubull wrote as follows: 



HARTFORD, February 1, 1880. 



DEAR PROFESSOR BAIRD : Your query of January 29 just now comes to hand. Isn't that 

 troublesome Dubertus rltoil!iixi/l<'iixis satisfactorily disposed of yet ? More than twenty-one yours 

 ago (in November, IS.jS) the Rev. S. C. Newman, of Pawtucket, questioned Professor Agassiz on 

 the subject. His reply was, that having looked in the only work in which he supposed the desired 

 information was likely to be found Neinnich's Pollyglotten Lexicon he could only say that it did 

 not even contain the name " Dubertus." The correspondence, so far unsatisfactory, was printed in 

 the " Providence Journal," December 9. The nest day the Hon. Albert G. Greene wrote to the 

 ''Journal " that " before and at the time of the granting of the charter of Rhode Island, ' Dubertus ' 

 was the word used to distinguish the sperm whale from' the common or right whale," and referred 

 for his autlfority to the description given by Sir Thomas Browne "of the spermaceti whale," 

 which "mariners (who are not the best noinenclators) called a Jubartaa, or rather Gibbartas." Mr. 

 Greene came very near being right, and undoubtedly was right in identifying the "Dubertus" of 

 the charter with the "Jubartas" or "Gibbartas"of the old whale fishermen; but he was wrong on 

 the main point that either "Jubartas" or "Dubertus" was a distinctive name of the sperm whale, 

 .\cept by a "vulgar error" of the Norfolk mariners, who, as Sir Thomas Browne understood, "are 

 not the best noinenclators." The "Jubartas," "Gibbartas," or "Gubartas" as the name which, by 

 an error of the engrossing clerk, appears as "Dubertus" in the Ehode Island charter, was 

 variously written by naturalists in the seventeenth century was a Finback, the " Balwna JVom 

 A a (/lite," as Klein calls it, the " Jupiter visch" of the Dutch whalers, Balmwptera Jubartes of 

 Lace'pede. (The last name I heard for it was, I think, Sibbaldius tuberosus ; but this was a year 

 or two ago, and it may have been rechristeued a dozen times since then.) The name, however, has 

 been applied to more than one species of Finback, for naturalists, when dealing with cetacea, were 

 not, in the last century, much better "nomeuclators" than the English mariners ; but it has always 

 been restricted to the Balaenopterida, and has never designated any species of either sperm or 

 rii/ltt whales. 



The history of the name is curious. Eondelet (" De Piscibus" lib. xvi, p. 482) gives a figure of 

 a " Bahiina Vera" (drawn from life, he says) which "the whale fishers of Saintouge call Gibbar, a 

 Gibbero Dorso, that is, raised in a hump, on which is the tin." From this provincial name came 

 Gibbai-fdK, Gubnrttm, Jubart, Jubartes, Jupiter, and half a dozen other corruptions, introduced first 

 among mari n eis, and afterwards adopted or recognized as synonyms by naturalists, and distributed 

 among three or four different species. 



Lace'pede, under Balwnoptera Jubartes, includes Balccna boops (Gmelin), and "probably the 

 Kul/ilmr-bottom of the west coast of NorWi America," the Jubartes of Klein, and the Jupiter Fisch, 

 described by Anderson, as well as Baleine Jxbartc of Bonnaterre (Encyc. Meth.). 



Klein ("Misc. Pise.," 11, 13) says that the whale catchers have corrupted the name of the Jupiter, 

 or L'iscis Jovis, to Jubartes, which is reversing the actual process of corruption. He calls this the 

 ' Whale of New England." 



Anderson, cited by Lacepede, in '-Nachrichten von Island, Gronland, etc.," p. 220, describes "the 

 Jupiter or Jnpiterfisch " as a kind of fin-fish, saying that its name, without doubt, comes from that 

 of Gubttries or Gibbtirtas, which has been given it by others, and which is itself a corruption of 

 the Biscayau Gibbni-, 



But Lacepede makes " Balana nodosa," "Humpback Whale of the English," and Balwna 

 gibbosa" the Whales of New England, and refers to Bonnaterre. who separates / Gibbar, Eugl. 

 Finfish, from la Jubarte B. boops. Between Gibbar and Gibbosa, Jupiter and Gubartus, the things 

 get rather mixed. 



