12 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF 



which are not only ingenious, but true, yet Sir Charles 

 Linnaeus, with an accuracy of anatomical discrimination 

 which an enlightened posterity bids fair to honour and 

 esteem, has very properly referred them to the class 

 mammalia, a reference extremely just, though the pro- 

 priety of such an arrangement does not, at first sight, 

 appear correct to the mere anatomist or the historian 

 of nature. 



Mr. Pennant, in his " British Zoology," describes 

 these and all other cetaceous animals found upon our 

 coasts under the title of cetaceous fishes. He objects to 

 the scientific arrangement of Linnaeus in the following 

 terms : " In order to preserve the chain of beings entire, 

 Linnaeus should have made the genus of plwcce or seals, 

 together with the trichecus rosmarus or walrus, imme- 

 diately precede the whale, those having limbs connecting 

 the mammalia, or quadrupeds, with the fish ; for the 

 seal is, in respect to its legs, the most imperfect of the 

 former class; and in the walrus all the hinder feet 

 coalesce, assuming the form of a broad horizontal tail."* 



Mons. Bloch has very properly excluded the whales 

 and other cetaceous animals, with the exception of the 

 delphinus phoceana, or porpoise, from his splendid work 

 upon fishes ; yet, strange to say, he has, in the most 

 inconsistent manner, included them in one of the smaller 

 and late editions as a seventh class, " les cetdcees." In 

 a prefatory note he informs us, however, that Linnaeus 

 places them at the conclusion of the mammalia, imme- 

 diately after the hog tribe. But the entire class of these 

 animals inserted by Bloch has been supplied from the 

 researches of Duhamel, with the aid of the works of 

 Anderson, Bonnate'rre, Art£di, Ray, and Belon. Baron 



* " British Zoology," vol. iii. 



