190 MAMMALIA. 



Physeter, Lacep. 



Is a Cachalot with a dorsal fin. Two species only are distinguished 

 among them, microps, and tursio or mular, and those, from the very 

 equivocal character of teeth, arcuated or straight, sharp or blunt.* 



They are found in the Mediterranean as well as in the Arctic 

 Ocean. Those of the latter are said to be the most inveterate enemies 

 of the Seals. 



Balden A, Lin. 



The Whales are equal in size to the Cachalots, and in the proportional 

 magnitude of the head, although the latter is not so much enlarged in 

 front; but they have no teeth. The two sides of their upper jaw, which 

 is keel-shaped, or like a roof reversed, are furnished with thin, compact, 

 transverse laminae, called whalebone, formed of a kind of fibrous horn, 

 fringed at the edges, which serve to retain the little animals on which 

 these enormous Cetacea feed. Their lower jaw, supported by two osseous 

 branches arched externally and towards the summit, and completely un- 

 armed, lodges a very thick and fleshy tongue, and when the mouth is 

 closed, envelopes the internal part of the upper jaw, and the whalebone 

 with which it is invested. These organs do not allow whales to feed on 

 such large animals as their size might induce us to imagine. They live 

 on fish, but principally on Worms, Mollusca, and Zoophytes, selecting, it 

 is said, the very smallest, Avhich become entangled in the filaments of the 

 whalebone. Their nostrils, better organised for the sense of smell than 

 those of the Dolphins, are furnished with some ethmoidal plates, and ap- 

 pear to receive some small filaments from the olfactory nerve. Their 

 ceecum is short. 



Bal. mysticetus,-\ L. ; Lacep. Cet. pi. 2 and 3, under the name of 

 Nord-Caper, and Scoresby, Arct. Reg. II. pi. 12. (The Great 



sides that of size, than that the teeth are sharper, a circumstance that may depend 

 upon age. It is not even certain that those which have been produced are not those 

 of some large Dolphin. 



The Physeter macrocephahis of Linnaeus, Cach. cylindrique of Bonnaterre, (genus 

 Physalus of Lacep.) would have a good character in the distant location of its spi- 

 racle; but this species merely rests on a bad figure of Anderson, and no one has ever 

 seen any thing like it. 



The albicans of Brisson, huid-fisk of Egede and Anderson, converted by Gmelin 

 into a variety of the macrocephalus, is the beluga dolphin, which sheds its teeth at a 

 very early age, a fact we have ascertained. 



* The only one tolerably well ascertained, is from a bad figure of Bayer, Act. 

 Nat. Cur. III. pi. 1, taken from an animal thrown on shore at Nice. The name 

 mular has been very vaguely applied to it; the mular of Nieremberg is a Cachalot, it 

 is true; but there is nothing to prove it is one species more than another. 



As to the different indications of the Cachalots of authors, see my Oss. Foss. 

 torn. V. p. 328, et seq. Add to them the figure given in the Journ. des Voyages, of 

 February, 1826, and that in the Voy. de Freycinet, pi. xii. With respect to the Ca- 

 chalots described by M. de Lacepede, Mem. du Museum, torn. IV. from Japanese 

 drawings, the very nature of the document on which they rest forbids me from giv- 

 ing them a place here. 



t The phalaina of Aristotle and iElian, which was an enemy of the Dolphin, ap- 

 pears to have been a large cetaceous animal armed with teeth; the only true Whale 

 known to Aristotle was his mysticeius, which had, says he, setae in the mouth in place 

 of teeth; most probably the Whale, with the wrinkled throat, of the Mediterranean. 



