2 



unwieldiness of the skeletons^ but of the time and trouble 

 necessary to extract the oil with which their bones are 

 saturated, and which makes the preparation of them, as I can 

 vouch, most offensive to the senses. Perfect skeletons of the 

 order of Cetacea, or more correctly Cete, are, therefore, in fact, 

 very rare in museums. Of animals said to be cachalots or 

 sperm whales, perhaps the most perfect skeleton hitherto 

 described, is the one said by Beale to belong to Sir Clif- 

 ford Constable, Bart., of Burton Constable, in York- 

 shire. Its carcass was cast ashore on the coast of that 

 county in 1825, and was described in the same year by Dr. 

 Alderson, in a paper read before the Cambridge Philosophical 

 Society. 



Beale was the surgeon of a whaler, who having made some 

 notes on the habits of the sperm whale of the Northern 

 Pacific, determined on his return to England, in 1883, to give 

 an account of its osteology. This, however, he appears to have 

 studied for the first and only time, not in any of those 

 numerous whales he had seen killed on the coast of Japan, 

 but in Sir Clifford Constable's Yorkshire specimen, the 

 skeleton of which had been set up apparently in a very 

 creditable manner, by a Mr Wallis, of Hull, many years after 

 the animal had been cast ashore. Now, this Yorkshire 

 skeleton, we shall give good reasons for believing to be that of an 

 animal different not merely from our Sydney sperm, but even 

 from the true sperm whale of the coasts of Europe; nor is it likely 

 to be the same as that of the sperm whale of Japan. Beale, was 

 no doubt, led into his mistake by agreeing with most 

 observers since the time of Cuvier, in considering Lacepede's 

 three genera, Catodon, Pkysalus, and Physeter,^ and the 



* Physeter and Physalus are classical words to express the blowing of 

 whales, and, therefore, are names applicable to all Cetacea. Catodon is a 

 modern name invented by Artedi, and adopted by Linnaeus, to express what 

 is more peculiar to sperm whales, namely, their possession of teeth only in the 

 under jaw. The French name cachalot, is, according to Cuvier, derived from 

 the Basque word cachau, signifying tooth. It may be here observed, that the 

 Basques had a right to name the animal, as they appear to have been the first 

 professional fishermen of the sperm whale, the valuable products of which were 

 comparatively unknown to the ancients. 



