212 MAMMALIA. 



the whalers always endeavour to attack the animal from that 

 quarter. If this species alone furnishes, as is asserted, all the 

 spermaceti and ambergris of commerce, it must be very widely 

 diffused, for these articles are drawn from the North and the 

 South. Cachalots, without dorsal fins, have been taken even in 

 the Adriatic. (1) The 



Physeter, Lacep. 



Is a Cachalot with a dorsal fin. Two species only are distinguished 



among them, microps, and tursio or mular, and those, from the very 



equivocal character of teeth, arcuated or straight, sharp orblunt.(2) 



They are found in the Mediterranean as well as in the Arctic 



Ocean. Those of the latter are said to be the most inveterate 



enemies of the Seals. 



Bal^nAj Lin. 



The Whales are equal in size to the Cachalots, and in the propor- 

 tional magnitude of the head, although the latter is not so much 

 enlarged in front; but they have no teeth. The two sides of their 

 upper jaw, which is keel-shaped, are furnished with thin, compact, 



(1) We perceive no real difference between this Cachalot, of which we have 

 good figures and several parts of the skeleton, and that of Roberson, Phil. Trans., 

 Vol. LX, of which IJonnaterre has made a species under the name of irumpo, 

 which is applied, at Bermuda, to a Cachalot, without any more precise indication. 



As to the Little Cachalot, F. catodon, Lin., no other difference is mentioned 

 besides that of size, than that the teeth are sharper, a circumstance that may depend 

 upon age. It is not even certain that those whicli have been produced are not 

 those of some hu-ge Dolphin. 



The P/tysetermacrocephalus of hmnxus, Cacli. cylindriqiie of Bonnatevre, (genus 

 Physalus of Lacep.) would have a good cliaracter in the distant location of its 

 spiracle; but this species merely rests on a bad figure of Anderson, and no one has 

 ever seen any thing like it. 



The albicans of Brisson, huidfisk of Egede and Anderson, converted by Gmelin 

 into a variety of the macrocephalus, is the beluga dolphin, which sheds its teeth at 

 a very early age, a fact we have ascertained. 



(2) The only one tolerably well ascertained, is from a bad figure of Bayer, 

 Act. Nat. Cur. Ill, pi. 1, taken from an animal thrown on shore at Nice. The 

 name mular has been very vaguely applied to it; the mular of Nieremberg is a 

 Cachalot, it is true ; but there is nothing to prove it is one species more than 

 another. 



As to the different indications of the Cachalots of authors, see my Oss. Foss, 

 torn. V, p. 328, et seq. Add to them the figure given in the Journ. des Voyages, 

 of February 1826, and that in the Voy. de Freycinet, pi. xii. With respect to 

 the Cachalots described by M. de Lacepede, Mem. du Museum, tom. IV, from 

 Japanese drawings, the very nature of the document on which they rest forbids 

 me from giving them a place here. 



