WHALES AND MERMAIDS 333 



the soosoo. It is blind, and gropes about with its long 

 beak-like snout in muddy waters for the small fishes, 

 shrimps, and crabs on which it feeds. 



Another exclusively river cetacean, named Inia, is 

 found in the Upper Amazon and its tributaries. It 

 is about seven feet long, and has an elongated beak. 

 A still longer beak is possessed by a similar creature 

 which is found at the mouth of the Rio de la Plata, and 

 has been named Pontoporia. It is about the smallest 

 of the cetaceans, and does not exceed five feet in length, 

 but it has from fifty to sixty teeth 011 either side of each 

 jaw. 



Such are the more noticeable existing forms of 

 toothed and toothless whales. Immense quantities of 

 allied forms have been found fossil in later tertiary 

 strata, especially in Belgium and the east of England. 



The illustrious American naturalist, Dr. Harlan, 

 found a tooth in the Eocene strata of Alabama, to which 

 he gave the name Basilosaurus, but Sir Richard Owen 

 pronounced it to belong to a beast, which from the 

 form of the tooth he named Zeuglodon. Herr Kock also 

 found fossil in America, many years ago, a number of 

 bones of the backbone of some animal. These he con- 

 cocted into an immense creature 100 feet long, which he 

 called the Hydrarchus. It was taken to Europe, when 

 the great John Miiller saw it at Berlin. He gave a 

 correct description of it, showing that it was really but 

 60 feet long at the most, as also that its backbone was 

 formed like that of cetaceans. It was a zeuglodon. 

 Now we know that the skull and teeth of that animal 

 are very seal-like, and there is much reason to believe 

 that, altogether, this enigmatical creature was much more 

 like a seal than it was like any kind of whale. 



