47 



be found to suit the above description of it as recorded by 

 those gentlemen. I must however in candour confess that I 

 am disposed to suspect that the Paris skull has been badly 

 described, and that it may possibly after all belong to the same 

 genus as our cetacean. On the other hand, it is almost incredi- 

 ble, if the genus Kogia be identical with our Euphysetes, that 

 Mr. Gray should have been silent on what certainly is by far 

 the most remarkable character of the latter's skull, namely, the 

 heavy ridge ofbone that longitudinally divides the spermacetic 

 cavity into two unequal parts. There has been nothing like 

 this structure hitherto described among Cetacea. 



It is to be regretted that a barbarous and unmeaning word 

 like Kogia should have been admitted into the nomenclature 

 of so classical a group as the Cetacea ; and with respect to 

 De Blainville's trivial name hreviceps, however good and 

 characteristic it may have been in conjunction with the genus 

 Physeter, it is manifest, that when once these animals with short 

 heads are separated generically from true sperm whales, such 

 a name has the defect of belonging to all the species that may 

 be found in the genus, and consequently becomes a generic 

 instead of a specific epithet. There has, therefore, in the 

 naming of our animal been an endeavour to avoid both these 

 defects, and it has been called Euphysetes Grayii ; where the 

 word Euphysetes, namely, a good or easy blower, alludes to the 

 enormous size of the left nostril, and the specific name is 

 given in honor of J. E. Gray, Esq., chief of the Natural History 

 Department in the British Museum, a gentleman who has 

 much distinguished himself in the study of this order of 

 mammals.* 



OF THE SPINAL COLUMN. 

 The Euphysetes Grayii has forty-four vertebrae in 



* If some odoriferous hero of the harpoon should here sing out, *• Give us a 

 plain English name, and no nonsense ;" I have the satisfaction to inform him 

 that he can with considerable propriety call this whale "the new codger," 

 and thus distinguish it from *' the old codger" which is Mr, Gray's Kogia 

 breviceps. 



