CETACEA. 3 
Fossiles,’ examined the various documents and consulted the 
authorities which had been used by Lacepéde; but he appears to 
have undertaken the work with‘a predisposition to reduce the 
number of species, which his predecessor had described, to the 
smallest number. Thus, he concludes that there are only eleven 
species of Dolphins, one Narwhal, one Hyperoodon, one Cachalot 
or Sperm Whale; and he appears to think there are only two . 
Whalebone Whales—the Right Whale and the Finner. To make 
this reduction: first, he believes that the Hump-backed Whale of 
Dudley is only a whale that has lost its fin, not recognizing that 
the Cape Rorqual, which he afterwards described from the fine 
skeleton now shown in the inner court of the Paris Museum, is 
one of this kind; secondly, that the Black-fish and the Sperm 
Whale are the same species; an error which must have arisen 
from his not having observed that Sibbald had figured the former, 
for he accuses Sibbald of twice describing the Sperm Whale; and 
when he came to Schreiber’s copy of Sibbald’s figure, he thinks 
the figure represents a Dolphin which had lost its upper teeth, 
overlooking the peculiar form and posterior position of the dorsal 
fin, and the shape of the head, which is unlike that of any known 
Dolphin. This mistake is important, as it vitiates the greater part 
of Cuvier’s criticism on the writings of Sibbald, Artedi ‘and others, 
on these animals. Unfortunately these views have been very 
generally adopted without re-examination. But, in making these 
remarks, it is not with the least desire to underrate the great 
obligation we owe to Cuvier for the papers above referred to; 
for it is to him that we are indebted for having placed the exa- 
mination of the Whales on its mght footing, ‘and for directing 
our inquiries into the only safe course on these animals, which 
only fajl in our way at distant periods, and generally under very 
disadvantageous circumstances for accurate examination and 
study. 
Tn 1828, Mr. F. J. Knox, the Conservator of the Museum of 
the Old Surgeons’ Hall in Edinburgh, published a Catalogue of 
the Anatomical preparations of the Whale, in which he gives many 
‘interesting details on the anatomy of the Balena maaimus and B. 
minimus, which had been stranded near Edinburgh, of the foetus 
of B. mysticetus from Greeniand, and of Delphinus Tursio (D. leu- 
_ copleurus), D. Delphis and Phocena communis, Soosoo gangeticus, 
and Halicore Indicus; but the paper has been very generally 
neglected or overlooked. 
- M.F. Cuvier’s ‘ Cetacea’ (Paris, 1836) is little more than an 
ieepansion of his brother’s essays, with a compiled account of the 
_ species ; but he has consulted with greater attention the works of 
"Sibbald and Dudley, has some doubts about the finned Cachalots 
- being the same as the Sperm Whale (p. 475), but at length gives 
2 
; A 
