340 SIZE OF WHALES CHAP. 
muscular. Brain much expanded transversely and well con- 
voluted. Testes abdominal. Teats two, inguinal in_ position. 
Placenta diffuse and non-deciduate. 
The Whales and Dolphins, which constitute this order, form an 
assemblage which is easily characterised by reason of the fact 
that their affinities to other groups of Mammalia are so doubtful 
that they furnish matter rather for speculation than for authori- 
tative statement. Some hold that they resemble in certain points 
the Ungulata; while others again see in them the culminating 
term of a series which commences with such a form as the Otter, 
and of which the Seals and Sea-lons are intermediate stages. A 
third opinion is that the Whales have arisen from some low 
mammalian stock, too primitive to be assigned to any existing 
order of mammals. Palaeontology, as will be seen later, throws. 
no light whatever upon their origin. This matter has already 
been referred to (see p. 120) in considering the position of the 
Cetacea 
The Whales include the most gigantic of all the orders of 
vertebrated animals. No creature living or extinct is so large as 
the Sibbald’s Rorqual, which attains to a length of some 85 feet, 
or perhaps even rather more. On the other hand we have what 
are by comparison minute forms. Apart from the possibly pro- 
blematical Delphinus minutus, stated to be only 2 feet in length, 
we have as a minimum 3 or 4 feet. The size of the Cetacea 
has been subjected to much exaggeration. The first duty of a 
Whale, observed the late Sir William Flower, is to be large; and 
Natural Historians, in the recent as well as in the remote past, 
have not hesitated to put very round numbers upon the dimen- 
sions of the larger members of the order. We may perhaps 
pass over Pliny’s “ fish called balaena or whirlpool, which is so 
long and broad as to take up more in length and breadth than 
two acres of ground,’ and a number of analogous exaggerations, 
which gradually dwindled down to the dimensions just stated of 
the great Rorqual. M. Pouchet has made the ingenious sug- 
gestion that the statements of the ancients may have been nearer 
the truth than observations of to-day would have us believe ; 
he pointed out justly that in former times Whales were not so 
relentlessly pursued as during the last century; the inference 
being that they may have lived to a greater age, and attained 
a more colossal bulk. The more modern exaggerations in the 
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