424 
It is very curious that these beaks should form such a mass, as 
this indicates that they must be very abundant in some parts of the 
sea, and proves that they must form at least a large portion of the 
food of this animal. I have never seen the Octopus in large numbers 
either at sea, in the nets of the fishermen, or thrown up on the coast ; 
yet ar they are abundant somewhere these beaks are a sufficient 
proof. 
_ The beaks sent me by Mr. Beardsworth all appear to belong to a 
single species; but he informs me there were some of a larger size 
intermixed with them when they were first taken out of the stomach, 
but they were selected and taken away by the bystanders. As there 
are only an upper and a lower beak to each fish, and they are of a 
small size, it would require many thousand animals to make up a 
half-bushel of them. 
The measurement of the younger Cetacean, as given by Mr. 
Beardsworth’s account, is interesting as showing its large size while 
yet in company with its mother, and proving that Dr. Knox’s ob- 
servation, that the foetus of the Porpoise is half the length (that is 
one-fourth of the size) of the parent before it is born, and that the 
young appear to attain their full size very rapidly, is probably equally 
true in the genus Hyperoodon. 
It is to be observed that both the female from Whitstable and 
the female from Weston-super-Mare have the dorsal fin on the hinder 
part of the back, about two-thirds the distance from the head, as in 
Hunter’s figure of the Bottle-nose (Phil. Trans. vol. Ixxvii. t. 19), 
and not in the middle of the back, as in the Bottle-head or Flounder’s- 
head described and figured by Dale in his History of Harwich, p. 411. 
t. 149. 
In my Monograph on Whales, published in the ‘ Zoology of the 
Erebus and Terror,’ I described and figured a species of Hyperoodon 
from the skull of an animal which had been caught at the Orkneys, 
under the name of Hyperoodon latifrons, on account of the great 
height and very great thickness of the reflexed part of the maxillary 
bones, which form the crest in front of the blowers. 
Professor Eschricht considers that this species is founded on the 
skull of an adult male of the common species (which he calls Hyper- 
oodon butzkopf), because the specimen of the animal with this kind 
of skull which he received from Faroe was of that sex. 
The following facts I think will dispel such an idea :—first, I think 
I can prove that males and females have been seen and preserved of 
both species; and secondly, the structure and form of the two skulls 
is so different, that it is much more likely that they should be refer- 
able to two very distinct genera than to species of the same genus. 
I may state that I have examined four skulls of the H. latifrons, 
and Professor Eschricht has another. 
There is a skeleton with the skull of an adult animal of this species 
in the College Museum at Edinburgh, which was obtained from the 
Frith of Forth on the 29th of October, 1839. Mr. William Thomp- 
son (Ann. and Mag. Nat. Hist. 1846, vol. xvii. p.153) informs us that 
this specimen was a female 28} feet long, accompanied by a young 
