cyt THE PORPOISE CHAP. 
make a breathing hole. A third suggestion is due to Scoresby, 
who was led to make it from having taken out of the stomach of 
a Narwhal a large skate. He held that with its tusk the Whale 
empaled the fish and then swallowed it. The Narwhal is not 
large, 15 feet or so in length. But Lacepede, who was apt to 
compile with lack of discrimination, speaks of 60 feet long 
Narwhals. MJonodon is purely Arctic, and but three or tour 
specimens have ever been cast up on our shores. 
Of true Porpoises, genus Phocaena, there are apparently 
several species. The genus itself has the following characters :— 
The teeth are sixteen to twenty-six on each half of each jaw; 
their crowns are compressed and lobed. The pterygoids do not 
meet. The dorsal fin has a row of tubercles along its margin. 
The Porpoise of our coasts, P. communis, is a smallish species 
6 to 8 feet in length. There are two to four hairs present in 
the young; its colour is black, generally lighter on the belly. 
The first six cervical vertebrae are fused. The ribs vary in 
number from twelve to fourteen pairs. It is a gregarious Whale, 
and will ascend rivers; it has been seen for example in the 
Seine at Paris. The name Porpoise is often written Porkpisce, 
which of course shows its origin. Very conveniently it was 
regarded as a fish, and therefore allowed to be eaten in Lent. 
The celebrated Dr. Caius, a gourmet as well as a physician and 
the refounder of a college, invented a particular sauce wherewith 
to dress this royal dish. Some time since Dr. Gray described a 
Porpoise from Margate as a distinct species (see p. 342) on account 
of the tubercles, which are now known to be a generic character. 
Dr. Burmeister’s P. spinipennis seems, however, to be really 
distinct. It was captured near the mouth of the Rio de la Plata. 
It is more tuberculated on the fin and back, and has fewer teeth 
(sixteen as against twenty-six). 
Mr. True’s P. dallii of the Pacific (where the Common 
Porpoise also occurs) is characterised chiefly by its very long 
vertebral column, consisting of ninety-eight vertebrae; there 
are only sixty-eight in the other species. The Eastern genus 
Neomeris is placed with Phocaena by Dr. Blanford. It practi- 
cally only differs by the absence of a dorsal fin. It is only 
about 4 feet long, and inhabits the seas of India, Cape of Good 
Hope, and Japan. The one species is called W. phocaenoides. 
The genus Gilobicephalus is to be defined thus :—Teeth 
