SPERM WHALES 183 



have been expelled from the herd. All the members 

 of this division of the toothed whales range widely. 

 None are really restricted in range, except the 

 Berardius. They are equally at home in the calm 

 seas of the tropics, amidst the ice floes of the north, 

 and in the stormy waters of the antarctic ocean. They 

 all possess functional teeth in the lower jaw, and 

 there only. Their food seems to be chiefly, if not 

 invariably, cuttlefish ; and this circumstance accounts 

 for their greater abundance in the tropics, for those 

 animals more abound in those latitudes. Van 

 Beneden reminds us that all, or at any rate most, 

 of the Physetericlae produce spermaceti. Originally 

 known, and once solely obtained, from the Sperm 

 whale itself, the late Captain Gray commenced at 

 one time to pursue Hyperoodon for the same sub- 

 stance ; he found it to be by no means inferior in 

 quality to that of Physeter, and to be of the same 

 composition. From Berardius spermaceti has been 

 also obtained. The grooving of the throat which 

 characterises, indeed appears to be universal in, these 

 whales may have some relation to the extensility of 

 the gorge required by the enormous quantity of 

 cuttlefish devoured. It may be in fact a structure 

 developed by similar needs to those which have 

 produced the grooves upon the Bal&noptera, and to 

 be therefore no evidence of affinity. Ten thousand 

 beaks of the Molluscs were obtained from the stomach 

 of a Hyperoodon, 



We may associate the " Sperm whales " sensu 

 stricto in the sub-family Physeterinae, which is quite 



