21 



M. Quoy on the shores of Falkland Islands, which he says 

 was exactly like B. Plnjsalus. It was 55 feet long, and 

 the pectoral fin (5 feet 3 inches, that is, abont \ the entire 

 length, the same as in Bahenoptera P/ii/fialus, but he says 

 the dorsal fin was over the male organ, a character which as 

 far as I know is peculiar to the Hump-backed Whale, thus 

 presenting a combination of characters which, if correct, 

 will not only prove it to be a distinct species, but one form- 

 ing a section by itself. 



Fam. 2. Catodontid.e. Toothed Whales. 



Head large. Upper jaw toothless; lower jaw with co- 

 nical teeth fitting into cavities in the edge of the upper 

 one. Blowers united together, with a lunate opening. 



I. Catodon, part, Artedi. Spermaceti Whale. 

 Physeter, part, Linn. Physalus, Lacep. 



Head truncated and rather compressed in front, with 

 the blowers close together on the front of the upper edge, 

 separated from the head by an indentation. Nose of 

 skull elongate, broad, depressed. Lower jaw shorter than 

 the upper one, very narrow, C3'lindrical in front, and 

 united by a symphysis for nearly half their length. Back 

 with a roundish tubercle in front, over the eyes, called the 

 " bunch," and a rounded ridge of fat behind, highest in 

 fi'ont over the genital organs, called the " hump," and con- 

 tinued in a ridge to the tail. No true dorsal fin. Pec- 

 toral broad, truncated. Teeth conical, often worn down. 

 Males larger than the females. 



Clusius describes tlie blowers as placed on the head near 

 the back, and Artedi and Linnaeus adopt this error in their 

 character of Pliyseler macrocepltaliis. Anderson (Iceland, 

 ii. 186, t. 4) gives a figure of a Whale with a truncated 

 head, much resembling the old figures of the Sperm Whale, 

 with the blower on the hinder part of the head, like a Phy- 

 seter. Bonnaterre established on this figure his Physeter 

 cylindrus ; and Lacepede forms a genus for it, which he 

 calls Physnlii-t. The Dutch engraving of the animal de- 

 scribed by Clusius, shows this to have been a mistake. 



The bunch and hump referred to by Beale and the other 

 whalers, appears first to have been described by T. Hasaeus 

 of Brerae, in 17-23, in a dissertation on the 'Leviathan of 

 Job and the Whale of Jonas;' on "a specimen 70 feet long, 

 with a very large head, the lower jaw 16 feet long, with 52 

 pointed teeth, with a boss on the back, and another near 

 the tail, which resembles a fin." Cuvier, after quoting this 

 very accurate description, observes, " Mais d'apres Tobser- 

 vation fait sur divers dauphins, cette disposition que per- 

 sonne n'a revue pourroit avoir ete accidentelle, et alors cet 

 animal n'auroit diflere en rien du Cachalot vulgaire." — 

 Oss. Foss. V. -331. Indeed Cuvier's mind a])])cars to have 

 been made up that the Sperm Whale had no hump in the 

 place of the dorsal fin, for he wrongly accuses Bonnaterre 

 of having added a tubercle in his copy of Anderson's figure, 

 which is not in the original. — Oss. Foss. 332. Anderson, 

 in the description of this animal, says that it has a pro- 

 minence four feet long and a foot and a half high near its 

 tail, as in his figure. But the fact was that Cuvier erro- 

 neously combined the Sperm Whale and the Black-fish 



{Physeter) together ; and he could not otherwise reconcile 

 how some authors, as Haseus, Anderson and Pennant, 

 described the Sperm Whale with a hump ; while Sibbald 

 describes the Physeter, which he erroneously considered 

 the same animal, with a donsal fin, overlooking at the 

 same time the great difference in the form of the head, 

 and in the position of the blower of these two very dissi- 

 milar genera. — Oss. Foss. 338. 



From the following extract it would appear that Mr. 

 Bell has most unaccountably fallen into the same mistake. 

 He says, — " After careful examination of the various ac- 

 counts which have from time to time been given of Whales 

 belonging to this family, called Spermaceti Whales, I have 

 found it necessary to adopt an opinion in some measure at 

 variance with those of most previous writers, with regard 

 to the genera and species to which all those accounts and 

 details are to be referred. The conclusion to which I have 

 been led is, first, that the Hiyh-finned Cachalot is specifi- 

 cally but not generically distinct from the common one, 

 and that therefore the genus Catodon is to be abolished, 

 and the name Physeter retained for both species, and se- 

 condly, that all the other species which have been distin- 

 guished by various naturalists, have been founded upon 

 trifling variations, or upon vague and insufficient data." — 

 Brit. Quad. 507. Thus, though he differs from Cuvier in 

 regarding them as distinct species, yet he overlooked Sib- 

 bald's figures, lor he says there is none of the High-finned 

 Cachalot in existence, and persists in keeping it in the 

 genus Physeter, which he characterizes as having the 

 "Head enormously large, truncated in front," which is 

 quite unlike the de])ressed rounded head of the high-finned 

 Cachalot, or Black-fish of the whalers; and he also adopts 

 the mistaken description of the dorsal fin. 



The Northern Sperm Whale. Catodon macrocephalus. 



Spermaceti Whale, Dudley, Phil. Trans, xxxii. 258. 



Blunt-head Cachalot, Robertson, Phil. Trans. Ix. t. 



Balaena macrocephala bipinnis, Sibbald, Phal. 13. Rati, 

 Pisces, 15, 11. 



Physeter Catodon, O. Fab. 44, and Robertson, not Linn. 



Ph. Trumpo, Bonnat. Cetac. t. 8, /". 1, from Robertson. 



Phj'seter macrocephalus, Linn. S. N., O. Fab. F. Groen. 

 41. 



Physeter gibbus, Schreb. 



Inhab. North Sea, Teignmonth, Gesner, 1532. Scot- 

 land, Sibbald, Robertson. Greenland, O. Fab. &c. New 

 England, Dudley. 



It is to be remarked that all the older writers only de- 

 scribe this animal as occurring in the Northern Seas, and 

 Robertson and Fabricius described it as black when young, 

 becoming whitish below. 



All the figures, except Anderson's, are, by the unani- 

 mous experience of the whalers, far too long for the thick- 

 ness, and Anderson's scarcely represents the " bunch " 

 sufficiently prominent ; besides having the blower on the 

 wrong part of the head. 



Beale (Hist, of the Sperm Whale) says there is but one 

 species found in the North Sea, North America, New Gui- 

 nea, Japan or Peru ; but this is merely speaking the lan- 

 guage of whalers, and by species he means, as he does in 

 the other parts of his book, genus. I have no doubt, from 



G 



