ARCTIC ZOOLOGY. Ill 



charias, white shark, was more Ukely to afford the neces- 

 sarj?^ accommodation for the recreant prophet than the 

 baleena : with the latter, however, one would suppose the 

 man would have a better chance of escape. 



Many species of whale are seen in the northern seas, 

 a certain degree of cold seeming necessary to their habits. 

 They are observed to traverse the western ocean as low as the 

 fiftieth degree, but rarely below the fifty-fourth north latitude. 

 Of such as frequent the seas about Spitzbergen, Davis's 

 Strait and Hudson's Bay, the balaena mysticetus or com- 

 mon black whale, B. physalus or finner, B. boops or pike- 

 headed whale, and B. musculus or broad nosed whale, are 

 the most remarkable. Indeed, the distinctions of the two 

 latter species from the finner are so indefinite, and the 

 animals are so seldom seen, that it may be supposed, with 

 little injury to accurate description, that they are only 

 varieties of the same species. They shall however be men- 

 tioned separately according to the arrangement in the 

 system. 



The blubber Mhale being an object of more decided 

 distinction, on account of the avidity mth which it is pur- 

 sued for the sake of its commercial produce, is deservedly 

 placed foremost as a subject of natural curiosity, after the 

 diodon* has been exhibited. Anomalous of the generation 



* Monodon. 



