CHAP. II.] WHALES AND WHALERS. 43 



especially lives under every degree of latitude, both to 

 the north and south of the equator : a statement so 

 entirely at variance with our knowledge regarding 

 the distribution of animals throughout the globe 

 should be received with very great distrust. It is 

 true that the medium in which they live offers to 

 marine animals a very wide range, and great facili- 

 ties to exchange, in the different seasons, the glacial 

 seas for the equatorial ocean ; but until we have 

 strictly examined the anatomical, and especially the 

 osseous, structures of all the species which belong to 

 the cetaceous tribe, we are not justified in regarding 

 them as identical in both hemispheres. The por- 

 poise of the New Zealand seas (Delphinus Novae 

 Zelandise), which is figured in the 'Voyage de 

 1' Astrolabe,' plate 28, is decidedly a peculiar species ; 

 and we have not yet sufficient data to pronounce 

 that the whale is independent of what appears to be 

 a general law of nature. The whalers, it is true, 

 allow the identity of the Greenland sperm whale 

 and northern right whale with those of the antarc- 

 tic seas, but their evidence is not sufficient. Cuvier 

 admitted the difference between the Balsena Borealis 

 and the Balsena Australis, or Arctica and Antarctica. 

 The latter, described by him from a specimen pre- 

 pared at the Cape of Good Hope, differs in the num- 

 ber of its vertebrae, as it possesses seven collar, fifteen 

 dorsal, and thirty-seven abdominal; in the whole 

 fifty-nine. The Balaena Arctica possesses only seven 

 collar and thirteen dorsal vertebrae. From a very 



