366 THE IIIGH-FINNED CACHALOT 



Sperm Whale. Marco Polo took much the same view, but 

 suggested that the Whale did not deliberately attack the ship, 

 but was deceived by the foam following in its wake into thinking 

 " there is something to eat afloat, and makes a rush forward, 

 whereby it shall often stave in some part of the ship." ] 



Sir W. Flower and many others are of opinion that there is 

 but one species of Cachalot. But many names have been given 

 to supposed other forms. The genus itself has even been 

 divided, and to a set of vertebrae from the south Dr. Gray gave 

 the perfectly superfluous name of Meganeuron kreffti. The " High- 

 finned Cachalot " rests mainly upon the suggestions of Sir Efobert 

 Sibbald. It is supposed to have a high dorsal fin, and teeth in 

 the upper as well as in the lower jaw. Common though it was 

 asserted by its describer to be, there is not a bone, not a fragment 

 even of a bone, alleged to belong to Physeter tursio in any 

 museum in the world ! It seems premature, therefore, to include 

 this mysterious creature in any list of Cetacea, though that was 

 done by no less a naturalist than the late Mr. Thomas Bell. It 

 is this creature round which most of the stories of ferocity con- 

 gregate. It is held to be the monster from which Perseus 

 delivered Andromeda, and which was about to devour Angelica 

 upon the shore of Brittany. The fact of the matter is, that the 

 Sperm Whale, like so very many other Whales, is world-wide in 

 range ; and those naturalists who did not believe in so wide a 

 distribution found themselves obliged, in order to satisfy their 

 own views, to create new species for those of distant localities. 

 Hence the dozen or so of synonyms which refer to what is to be 

 called Physeter macrocephalus. 



The genus Kogia (sometimes written Cogia), the so-called 

 " Pygmy Sperm Whale," is a southern form of much smaller 

 dimensions than its gigantic ally just described. Kogia does 

 not exceed 15 feet or so in length. It differs from Physeter 

 also in the well-marked and falcate dorsal fin, in its generally 

 delphinoid form, in the short snout, and the more normal (for a 

 Whale) shape of the blow-hole, which is crescentic. 



There are also a number of osteological characters in which 

 the two Physeterines differ from each other. In Kogia all the 

 cervical vertebrae are ankylosed together ; the skull is short, 

 though equally asymmetrical ; the ribs are as many as twelve or 



1 Yule, Travels of Marco Polo, ii. London, 1874, p. 231. 



