MAY. 173 



slices of the lower. We found in his maw some beaks of 

 squids (Sepia). Under the skin was a coating of white fat, 

 an inch in thickness all over the body, and much thicker 

 about the head ; this was peeled from the flesh with the skin, 

 and thrown into a cask to melt into oil. All the cetaceous 

 animals having warm blood, w^ould be likely to be chilled by 

 the coldness of the water, as they have no outward covering, 

 such as fur or hair. God has therefore protected them by a 

 thick coat of fat, which is a poor conductor of heat : the 

 effect of this is, that their blood is as hot as that of any land 

 animal, if not more so. We ate part of the flesh of our 

 game ; it looked much like beef when raw, but w^as very 

 dark when cooked : it was particularly tender, and " ate 

 short" as it is called. I fancied it had something of the 

 taste of reindeer venison, which I had eaten in New- 

 foundland. This was a male, and one of large size. The 

 colour was bluish black on the back, lead colour on the sides 

 and fins, and white on the belly. The other that I saw 

 caught was in the Gulf of Mexico ; the harpooning, the 

 struggling, and the thumping of the tail were the same as in 

 the former instance ; but this was a much smaller specimen, 

 measuring only six feet in length : it was a female. It had 

 thirty-eight teeth on each side of each jaw, making one hun- 

 dred and fifty-two in all ; of this, too, I took a drawing. 

 Whenever a dolphin is harpooned, the rest of the shoal 

 vanish instantly, never staying to sympathize with the suf- 

 ferer : indeed, sailors say that if one is wounded and escapes 

 the harpoon, the rest immediately tear him to pieces with 

 their serrated jaws, and devour him. I think it probable 

 that some species of this tribe are yet undescribed. In going 

 up the English Channel in 1832, when off the Devonshire 

 coast, a large animal. of the cetaceous kind suddenly ap- 

 peared just under our bowsprit ; it swam along for about 

 ten minutes (the vessel going before the wind at about five 



