98 SEALS AND WHALES OF THE BRITISH SEAS. 



as already said, a slender barrier stops the spread of species, and species 

 would certainly not spread to a spot where there was nothing for them to 

 feed upon. Again, animal life could not begin to feed upon animal life till 

 vegetable life had previously prepared the way, by providing food for the 

 animals which were to furnish food for others.; and vegetable life could not 

 begin to grow without a foundation of land, accessible either above or below 

 water. The total and constant absence of all life at any particular spot 

 appears to me, therefore, to furnish a presumption that there has never been 

 dry land or shallow water there. Whether the continuance of deep water in 

 one spot for some interminably long time might not have the same effect is 

 another question, which, whatever way it may be answered, would not affect 

 my explanation of the cause of the absence of the Sperm Whale from such 

 spots."* 



The woodcuts (figs. 17 and 18), representing the chair in Yarmouth 

 Church, which is formed of part of the skull of an individual of this species, 

 are from the ' Purlestrations of Great Yarmouth,' by Mr. C. J. Palmer. 



THE ZIPHIOID WHALES. 



The sub-family Ziphiince, which follows next, is, perhaps, the most re- 

 markable of the whole of this interesting order. The Ziphioid Whales, as 

 they are designated, are, for the most part, very rare, and until the com- 

 mencement of the present century, with one exception, were known to 

 science only from their numerous remains, found chiefly in the Crag deposits. 

 Even so recently as 1871, Professor Flower, in a memoir of this groupf 

 speaks of their occurrence at irregular intervals, and at various and most 



* 'Geographical Distribution of Mammalia,' pp. 211-13. 

 \ 'Transactions' of the Zoological Society, viii., p. 203. 



