OP THE CETACEA. 71 



Being aquatic in their habit, the organ must espe- 

 cially have a reference to the laws of sound as con- 

 nected with their native element ; and yet several of 

 the species seem so formed as to receive impressions 

 conveyed through air. None of them have the ex- 

 ternal auricular appendages which are common in 

 the other mammalia ; neither have they any osseous 

 meatus opening; their external meatus is nothing 

 more then a very slender cartilaginous canal, which 

 commences sometimes at, and much more frequently 

 beneath, the surface of the skin, and takes a ser- 

 pentine direction as it passes through the subja- 

 cent parts to reach the drum of the ear. In the 

 sperm whale the external opening would admit a 

 small writing quill. After the examination of the 

 young mysticetm, Mr. Scorseby remarks, the opening 

 of the passage is so small as not to be easily dis- 

 covered ; in the sucking whale it was only one-sixth 

 of an inch in diameter (Journal, &c. 154J ; and 

 yet at a previous period he had stated that no orifice 

 for the admission of sound can be discovered in 

 the Greenland whale until the skin is removed 

 (Arct. Reg. i. 456). There is here a discrepancy 

 in the statements of this generally accurate and ac 

 complished author ; and on the authority of the 

 latter passage, it is usually stated that the mysticetiis 

 has no external aperture. In the beluga which 

 was examined by Dr. Barclay, no external opening 

 could be discovered, nor was any found in the tooth- 

 less whale of Havre, fifteen feet long, examined 

 by Blainville ; nor in any of the seventy gloliceps. 



