210 MAMMALS. 



The first, Megaptera, is best known by one species, M. longimana, which stands in natural 

 history books as a citizen of the world. The result of the recent inquiries of which I have spoken, 

 however, seems to show that each sjjecies has only a limited range, and probably makes a greater or 

 smaller migration within its district ; and it is possible that even this species, whose wide range is 

 better authenticated than that of any other, may turn out to have acquired this reputation by mistake. 

 Certainly one specimen from the Cape is preserved at Paris, which was considered by Eschricht, and 

 also by Van Beneden, to be undistinguishable from the Greenland sjieeies. The cervical vertebra) 

 of another specimen from the Cape, however, are in the British Museimi, and Dr. Gray has pointed 

 out and figured some difierences between them and the same parts of the M. longimana from the 

 Northern seas which he considers most striking specific distinctions. * 



The same diificultj' occurs with another of those gigantic finners, Sibbaldius laticeps. Its 

 usual habitat is the North Sea, but a sjjecimen of a AVhale of this genus and sub-section has lately 

 been received from Java by the Leyden Museum, and this has been examined and described by 

 Mr. Flower,t and liis conclusion is, after having compared it bone by bone with the northern 

 SiBBALDius LATICEPS, that they agree in every particular, and must be considered zoologically identical. 

 This opinion is the more reliable, that it is obviously wnmg from liim most reluctantly, as is ap- 

 parent when he says that on account chiefly of its peculiar habitat he has some difficulty in placing 

 it with LATICEPS, and as he is sure that its identity wiU be disjDuted by many cetologists on ac- 

 count of the habitat he names it provisionally S. Schlegelii. It would rather appear therefore 

 that one or more of the Bal^nopteka range over the whole world. 



The majority of species known, however, belong to the Northern hemisphere, a preponderance 

 doubtless in part due to its having been better examined, and in part to the greater extent of 

 soundings and coast on which their food breeds. 



Delphinid.i;. — Sperm-Whale. (Map 52.) That the Sperm Whale, Physeter, or Catodon Ma- 

 crocephalus, is a Dolphin, is apparent from its teeth at a glance. It was formerly thought that 

 several species existed, Lacepede having made as many as eight ovit of this single one. 



Its range is very wide. It has been seen and captured in almost every part of the ocean 

 between latitude 60° South and 60° North. Several ancient authors have stated that it has often 

 been seen at Greenland. Sir Thomas Brown,J (1686), after stating that " many conceive the 

 Sperm Whale to have been the fish which swallowed Jonah," adds, that " Greenland inquirers seldom 

 meet with a Whale of this kind." Seldom, is perhaps here used only as a saving clause against 

 never. Cuvier refers to reports that it had been seen there,- but these are now believed to be 

 erroneous ; at any rate, no modern instance is recorded of a Sperm Whale being found so far north 

 as Greenland. They have been recorded as found oW the north of Scotland, but no farther. Beale§ 

 gives a list of their favourite places of resort twenty years ago. He says that they are seldom or 

 never seen on ' soundings,' that is, where the bottom of the sea can be touched by the deepest sea 

 line, or on the ' banks,' as they are termed by whalers, that exist in various parts of the ocean, as 

 ' Brazil banks,' which are only discolorations of the water eaused by the myriads of animalculse, 

 which perhaps form the substance of the common black Whale's food, along with cuttle-fish, medusa?, 

 and other small animals. But the Sjierm Whale has been sometimes taken near the borders of the 

 submarine pastures, particularly near those of Brazil. 



* Dr. Gray on Bi'itisli Cetacea in " Proceed. Zool. Soc- t Sir Thomas Brown, " Roligio Medici," 1686. 



1864," p. 195. § Beale, Thomas, " Natural History of the Sperm 



t Flower in "Proc. Zool. Soc, 1864," p. 401. Whale," Loudon, 1836, p. 189. 



