DISEASE, DEFORMITY AND INJURY 255 



1942, p. 215). On the floor of the mouth below the tongue of one female (F36) was a firm ovoid 

 tumour with a wrinkled surface, greyish-blue in colour; it measured 9 and 7 cm. across diameters, 

 was 4-5 cm. deep, and weighed 1 19 gm. A whale examined in the 1947-8 Antarctic season had two 

 such tumours in the same place, and Stolk (1953) describes and figures a similar condition in a sperm 

 whale from the Antarctic, diagnosing it as chronic, non-specific tonsillitis. The whaling company in 

 the island of San Miguel, Azores, the Uniao das Armacoes Baleeiras de S. Miguel, Lda., has very 

 kindly sent me a tumour from a sperm whale killed in September 1954. This tumour was found on the 

 lower jaw: it is a hard fibroma, somewhat pear-shaped, with its greatest dimensions 17 x 12 x 7 cm., 

 and it weighs 677 gm. The company inform me that the condition has never previously been observed 

 among more than 1600 sperm whales captured in San Miguel during the last sixteen years. In 1952 

 Senhor Reis at Horta examined a female whale (F115, 10-30 m. long), which had some kind of 

 inflammation of the invertebral discs, for the whale (which was physically mature) had a dark, hard 

 substance between the thoracic vertebrae. The occurrence in the Azores of ambergris, which I believe 

 to be a concretion of faeces in the hind gut (Clarke, 19546), is discussed in my earlier report (1954a). 



Deformity. It is interesting to record that whale F115, discussed above, was found to have no 

 nipples. 



I have earlier mentioned (p. 254) the deformed jaw-bone of whale F153, a male of 10-40 m. 

 examined at Horta on 17 June 1952. The lower jaw* curved steeply upwards in the vertical plane, and 

 was also slightly bent to the right (Plate II, fig. 1) ; the upper jaw was also deformed but to a lesser extent. 

 There is one previous record of a deformed jaw from the Azores (Osorio, 1909, p. 140; pi. Ill, fig. 2). 

 Besides the two records of this deformity from the Antarctic, by Mr A. G. Bennett and Commander 

 H. Buckle (p. 254), I am informed by Captain Martin Marthinsen, of A/S Thor Dahl, that he shot a 

 sperm whale with a scrolled jaw on the coast of Peru in 195 1. Beale mentions two crooked jaws from 

 the South Sea Fishery (1839, p. 36). Fischer (1867) and Sleptzov (1955, p. 49) figure one from 

 Mauritiusf and one from the far North Pacific respectively. Murie (1865) describes four* others, 

 Thomson (1867) refers to 'four or five' in New Bedford, and Pouchet & Beauregard (1889) describe 

 one from the Nantucket Museum. Sleptzov mentions that whales with 'broken' (slomannii) lower 

 jaws have sometimes been caught, and Beale states that a crooked jaw is frequently encountered; but 

 it does not appear common from these eighteen or nineteen records (which are all those known to 

 me of a condition bound to excite comment), although it is certainly a characteristic deformity in the 

 species. A deformed jaw might be supposed to interfere with feeding; yet Beale, Mr Bennett (1931, 

 p. 69) and Commander Buckle all state that the whales were fat or gave a good oil yield, and the 

 stomach of the Azores whale F 153 was full of squids. So it appears that neither a deformed jaw nor 

 a toothless jaw (p. 249) need handicap the sperm whale in its search for food. 



Injury. As elsewhere in the world, all but the youngest whales in the Azores bear about the jaws 

 and head the scars made by the hooks and suckers of the teuthid squids which are the principal food 

 of the sperm whale (Plate I, fig. 2). These scars, according as they are more or less abundant, afford a 

 rough distinction between age and youth. 



In 1949 all whales, except the smallest ones, showed an irregular scalloping of the posterior margin 

 of the flukes which had a somewhat ragged look when the scalloping was extensive (Plate II, fig. 5). 

 The flukes are thin in this region and the notched edges are smoothly healed without discoloration or 

 sign of scar tissue : they are probably nibbled by fishes which can give a clean bite, and it seems that the 

 agency responsible for oval scars (p. 252) is not at work here. The degree of notching of the flukes 



* The jaw from whale F153, and two of those described by Murie, are now in the collections of the British Museum 

 (Natural History). 



■J- The jaw from Mauritius was also described and figured by Beneden & Gervais (18S0, p. 319; pi. XIX, fig. 10). 



3-2 



