156 FOLLOW THE WHALE 



long that inhabits principally the North Atlantic, Mediterranean, and 

 South Atlantic and which is also known as Risso's Dolphin {Grampus 

 griseus). It is variously colored, yellow-brown to bluish- white with 

 dark-brown patches, and is covered with odd-shaped light streaks 

 as if someone had been cleaning a paintbrush on its back and flanks. 

 These marks are thought to be scars of wounds left by large squid 

 and octopus suckers or beaks, since this species feeds principally on 

 these. There are seven pairs of teeth and these only in the front of 

 the lower jaw. The head is rather small and blunt, the flippers very 

 slender and shaped like sickles, the tail flukes small, and the dorsal 

 fin tall, slender, and sharklike. The head is usually light, but the fin, 

 flippers, and tail are always dark, often almost black. 



Certain Roman writers say of the killer, to which they gave the 

 name by which it is now known to science — Orca — that it is the 

 tyr annus balaenarum or formidabilissimus balaenarum hostis, which 

 needs no translation and certainly most adequately describes the 

 brutes. 



