INTRODUCTION. 41 



has long been asserted, and never denied, tliat not- 

 mthstanding thousands of the Greenland whale 

 have been annually captured by the subjects of many 

 diflferent nations, there never was an accurate repre- 

 sentation of this species till it was supplied in 1809 

 by our illustrious countryman, Scorseby ; and he, in 

 his valuable work on the Arctic Regions, published 

 in 1820, states that Lacepede's figure of the true 

 whale has not its counterpart in nature ; and that 

 his common narwhal never had any real existence. 

 It is worthy of remark, that Lacepede's interesting 

 production has for long been the most popular 

 treatise on the subject ; and we regret to see that 

 some of its worst errors of representation and de- 

 scription have been copied into more recent works. 

 Some of the figures, in these popular treatises, are 

 no more like the animals they are meant to repre- 

 sent, than a bull-dog is like a greyhound. Nor are 

 the errors confined to the figure. They extend to 

 whole genera. Loose and vague accounts of voyagers 

 having been once incorporated into systematic works, 

 an almost inextricable confusion has been introduced, 

 which extorted fi^-om the capacious mind of Cuvier 

 the exclamation, — " Toutes ces indications incom- 

 plete ne serve qu a metre les naturalists a la torture ;" 

 and a man must himself go over the ground before 

 he can feel the full force of the sentiment. Lesson 

 gave utterance to his feelings on the point, ia these 

 words, — " What an impenetrable veil covers our 

 knowledge of Cetacea ! Groping in the dark, we 

 advance in a field strewed with thorns." There 



