366 THE HIGH-FINNED CACHALOT CHAD. 
suggested that the Whale did not deliberately attack the ship, 
but was deceived by the foam following in its wake into thinking 
“there is something to eat afloat, and makes a rush forward, 
whereby it shall often stave in some part of the ship.” 
Sir W. Flower and many others are of opinion that there is 
but one species of Cachalot. But many names have been given 
to supposed other forms. The genus itself has even been 
divided, and to a set of vertebrae from the south Dr. Gray gave 
the perfectly superfluous name of Weganeuron krefti. The “ High- 
finned Cachalot” rests mainly upon the suggestions of Sir Robert 
Sibbald. It is supposed to have a high dorsal fin, and teeth in 
the upper as well as in the lower jaw. Common though it was 
asserted by its describer to be, there is not a bone, not a fragment 
even of a bone, alleged to belong to Physeter tursio in any 
inuseum in the world! It seems premature, therefore, to include 
this mysterious creature in any list of Cetacea, though that was 
done by no less a naturalist than the late Mr. Thomas Bell. It 
is this creature round which most of the stories of ferocity con- 
gregate. It is held to be the monster from which Perseus 
delivered Andromeda, and which was about to devour Angelica 
upon the shore of Brittany. The fact of the matter is, that the 
Sperm Whale, like so very many other Whales, is world-wide in 
range; and those naturalists who did not believe im so wide a 
distribution found themselves obliged, in order to satisfy their 
own views, to create new species for those of distant localities. 
Hence the dozen or so of synonyms which refer to what is to be 
called Physeter macrocephalus. 
The genus Aogia (sometimes written Cogia), the so-called 
“Pyomy Sperm Whale,’ is a southern form of much smaller 
dimensions than its gigantic ally just described.  Aogia does 
not exceed 15 feet or so in length. It differs from Physeter 
also in the well-marked and faleate dorsal fin, in its generally 
delphinoid form, in the short snout, and the more normal (for a 
Whale) shape of the blow-hole, which is crescentic. 
There are also a number of osteological characters in which 
the two Physeterines differ from each other. In Aogia all the 
cervical vertebrae are ankylosed together; the skull is short, 
though equally asymmetrical; the ribs are as many as twelve or 
1 Yule, Zravels of Marco Polo, ii. London, 1874, p, 281. 
