The History of the Dolphin 



By ASHLEY MONTAGU 



/ hat/e met with a story, which, although authenticated 

 by undoubted evidence, loo\s very like a fable. 



Pliny the Younger 



T 



JLhe 



.HE HISTORY of the dolphiii is one of the most fasci- 

 nating and instructive in the historiography and the history of 

 ideas in the western world. Indeed, it provides one of the most 

 illuminating examples of what has probably occurred many 

 times in human culture — a virtually complete loss of knowledge, 

 at least in most segments of the culture, of what was formerly 

 well understood by generations of men. "Not in entire forget- 

 fulness" in some regions of the world, but certainly in "a sleep 

 and a forgetting" in the most sophisticated centers of the western 

 world. 



Dolphins are mammals. They belong in the order Cetacea, 

 suborder Odontoceti, family Delphinidae. Within the Delphini- 

 dae there are some twenty-two genera and about fifty-five 

 species. The count includes the Killer Whale, the False Killer 

 Whale, the White Whale, and the Pilot Whale, all of which are 

 true dolphins. There are two subfamilies, the Delphinapterinae, 

 consisting of the two genera Monodon monocerus , the Narwhal, 

 and Delphiiiapterus leucas, the White Whale or Beluga. These 

 two genera are distinguished by the fact that none of the neck 

 vertebrae are fused, whereas in all remaining genera, embraced 

 in the subfamily Delphininae, at least the first and second neck 

 vertebrae are fused. 



