THE BEAKED WHALES 1205 



Gray describes their activity as very great, stating that they are able to leap out of 

 the water many feet high in the air, and while so doing have time to turn their 

 heads to look about them. When descending, they re-enter the water head first, 

 instead of falling helplessly on their sides like the larger whales. Their ordinary 

 food, according to the same observer, consists of a bluish-white cuttlefish, six 

 inches long and three inches in circumference, and pointed toward the tail. The 

 stomachs of those whales that were examined contained nothing but remains of 

 these cuttles. In their search after food it appears that the bottle-nose whales de- 

 scend to great depths, as they remain under water for a long period, and blow very 

 heavily upon reaching the surface. When wounded, they will sometimes remain 

 below for as much as two hours at a time, after which they will come up apparently 

 untired. 



The bottle-nose yields spermaceti, and an oil very similar to sperm 

 oil and capable of being used for the same purposes. An adult male 

 will produce about two hundred weight of spermaceti and two tons of oil. The 

 protuberance on the front of the head of the female contains a small quantity of 

 colorless oil which is twice the density of that obtained from the blubber, while in 

 the male the same region is composed of solid fat. 



A fossil bottle-nose whale, apparently closely allied to the living species, has left 

 its remains in the Pliocene crag deposits of the eastern coast of England. 



The rare Cetacean, known as Cuvier's whale (Ziphius cavirostris}. 

 Cuvicr's 



Whale differs from the bottle-nose in having a pair of well-developed conical 



teeth at the extremity of the lower jaw, which are directed forward 

 and upward. In the skull there are but slight indications of the longitudinal bony 

 crests of the bottle-nose, while the beak is longer and much more solid in structure, 

 owing to the ossification of certain cartilages and their fusion with the adjacent 

 bones. When viewed from above, their beak is triangular in form, gradually tap- 

 ering from its broad base to its narrow extremity. A further point of difference 

 from the bottle-nose is to be found in the circumstance that only the first three, 

 instead of the whole seven, of the vertebrae of the neck are united together. The 

 color is believed to be black above and white below. This whale appears to be 

 known only from stranded specimens, which have been obtained from regions as 

 remote from one another as the Shetland islands, the Cape of Good Hope, Eastern 

 South America, and New Zealand. Sir W. Turner appears, therefore, to be fully 

 justified in his opinion that its distribution is as extensive as that of the sperm 

 whale. 



THE BEAKED WHALES 

 Genus Mesoplodon 



The beaked whales derive their English name from the great development of 

 the rostral portion of the skull, which is long and narrow, and formed of extremely 

 solid and ivory-like bone, while they take their scientific title from the presence 

 of a pair of teeth generally situated near the middle of each side of the lower jaw. 



