HARDWICKE'S SCIENCE -G0SS1 P. 



attempted to escape through an opening in the roof. 

 But to reach this Bruin had to clamber upon a lever, 

 which, under the pressure of his weight, opened the 

 sluice-gate, and, turning the water upon the wheel, 

 set the great hammer to work. Evidently annoyed 

 by its persistent motion and noise, he appears to have 

 grasped the hammer in his paws with intent to stop 

 it; but the contest proved beyond his strength, for 

 the neighbours, hearing loud roars, hastened to the 

 smithy and found him lying upon the anvil, having 

 received a death-blow before their arrival. 



THE SEALS AND WHALES OF THE 

 BRITISH SEAS. 



Part VI. 



By Thomas Southwell, F.Z.S., &c. 



WE now come to the second sub- order into 

 which the Cetacea are divided, namely, the 

 Odontoceti, or Toothed Whales. In this section, baleen 

 is never present, but well-developed teeth are found 

 in one or both jaws of the adult ; in some species 

 they are very numerous ; sometimes, though rarely, 

 deciduous. The blow-hole is single, and the skull 

 generally asymmetrical, or not precisely alike on both 

 sides of the medial line. Professor Flower divides 

 the Odontoceti into three families, one of which, the 

 Blatunistidm, as already said, is found only in 

 India and South America ; the other two, Physe- 

 terids and Delphinidce, are represented in our Fauna 

 by about fifteen species. 



Of the Physeteridcc, four genera are represented 

 in the British Fauna by five species ; namely, one 

 Physcter, the Sperm Whale ; two Hypcroodons, the 

 common Beaked Whale, and a very rare species 

 called the Broad-fronted Beaked Whale ; one Ziphius, 

 Cuvier's Whale ; and one Mesoplodou, Sowerby's 

 Whale. 



By far the most interesting species is the Sperm 

 Whale, Physcter viacrocephalus (Linnaeus), which 

 rivals the Right-whale in commercial importance and 

 in the value of its products. This species has a very 

 wide geographical range, having been found in almost 

 every sea between lat. 60° north and 60° south. The 

 attempt has been made, I think unsuccessfully, to 

 show that the Sperm Whale of the southern hemi- 

 sphere is distinct from that of the northern ; there 

 seems, however, no reason to doubt at present, al- 

 though, of course, it may eventually be found other- 

 wise, that the same species of Sperm Whale ranges 

 • over the whole of this vast tract of ocean. North of 

 about 40 it appears to be only a straggler, and 

 although the Arctic seas are almost always stated by 

 -authors to be its head-quarters, no well-authenticated 

 instance of its occurrence farther north than Scotland 

 is on record, and Lilljeborg excludes it from his 

 -account of the Scandinavian cetacea. Of its occur- 



rence on the British coast there are numerous in- 

 stances; in all cases, however, they are believed by 

 Andrew Murray to have been stragglers, " which 

 have rounded Cape Horn (they have never been 

 known to double the Cape of Good Hope) or un- 

 promising colonies, for they are becoming scarcer and 

 scarcer in more than their due proportion."* Of the 

 numerous occurrences on the coast of the British 

 isles I shall confine myself to a few early records. 



In the church of St. Nicholas, at Great Yarmouth, 

 is the basal portion of a skull of this animal, which 

 has been converted into a chair : it formerly stood 

 outside the church, and of course, as it was an object 

 of wonder, it was relegated to the powers of dark- 

 ness, and christened (?) the "Devil's Seat"; it 

 has, however, now been admitted into mother church, 

 and stands beside the north-west door under the 

 clock. Mr. C. J. Palmer tells me that in the church- 

 wardens' accounts for 1606 there is a charge of 8s. 

 for painting this chair, which clearly proves its an- 

 tiquity. Sir Hamon L'Estrange, in a letter to Sir 

 Thomas Browne (Wilkins's edit., 1852, editor's pre- 

 face to " Pseudodoxia," vol. i. p. lxxxi.), says that 

 in June, 1626, a whale, afterwards referred to by 

 Sir T. Browne as a sperm whale (vol. iii. p. 324), 

 was cast upon his shore or sea-liberty, " sometyme 

 parcel of the possessions of the Abbey of Ramsey, 

 &c." The same author, in his account of the " Fishes 

 found in Norfolk and on the Coast," says, "A Sper- 

 maceti whale of 62 feet long [came on shore] near 

 Wells, another of the same kind twenty years before 

 at Hunstanton [the one referred to by Sir H. L'Es- 

 trange] ; and not far off, eight or nine came ashore, 

 and two had young ones after they were forsaken 

 by the water." The whale mentioned by Sir H. 

 L'Estrange came on shore in 1626 : twenty years 

 after would give 1646 as the date of the Wells 

 specimen ; and in December of that year, according 

 to Booth's " History of Norfolk," published in 178 1 

 (vol. ix. p. 33), "A great whale was cast on the 

 shore here [at Holme-next-the-Sea], the wind blow- 

 ing strongly at the north-west, 57 feet long, the 

 breadth of the nose-end eight feet, from nose-end to 

 the eye 154 feet ; the eyes about the same bigness as 

 those of an ox, the lower chap closed and shut about 

 four feet short of the upper ; this lower chap narrow 

 towards the end, and therein were 46 teeth like 

 the tusks of an elephant ; the upper one had no 

 teeth, but sockets of bones to receive the teeth : two 

 small fins only, one on each side, and a short small 

 fin on the back ; it was a male . . . . ; the breadth 

 of the tail, from one outward tip to the other, was 

 13! feet. The profit made of it was £2.1']. 6s. 7d., 

 and the charge in cutting it up and managing it came 

 to ;£ioo or more." It seems probable that a 

 "school" got bewildered in the shallow waters of 

 the Wash, and that the individual of which Booth 



* "Geographical Distribution of Mammalia." By Andrew 

 Murray, 1866, p. 211. 



