WHALES, PORPOISES, AND DOLPHINS. 169 



ORDER VIII. CETACEA. 

 WHALES, PORPOISES, AND DOLPHINS. 



BEFORE the doctrine of the adaptation of animals to their natural surround- 

 ing had become understood, no creatures were a greater puzzle to naturalists 

 than the cetaceans, under which title are included whales, sperm-whales, 

 porpoises, and dolphins. Their fish-like form and marine habits seemed 

 indicative of their fish-like affinities ; whereas their internal structure, 

 breathing, and mode of reproduction proclaimed their mammalian kinship. 

 The latter features ought to have shown at once what their real position in the 

 zoological scale really was ; but, nevertheless, they long occupied a place 

 among the fishes. We read, for instance, in an abridged English edition of 

 Buffon's "Natural History," published in the year 1821, that all these 

 creatures "resemble quadrupeds in their infernal structure, and in some of 

 their appetites and affections. Like quadrupeds, they have lungs, a midriff, 

 a stomach, intestines, liver, spleen, bladder, and parts of generation ; their 

 heart also resembles that of quadrupeds, with its partitions closed up as in 

 them, and driving red arid warm blood in circulation through the body ; and 

 to keep these parts warm, the whole kind are also covered between the skin 

 and muscles with a thick coat of fat or blubber. As these animals breathe the 

 air, it is obvious that they cannot bear to be any long time under water. 

 They are constrained, therefore, every two or three minutes, to come up to 

 the surface to take breath, as well as to spout out through their nostril for 

 they have but one that water which they sucked in while gaping for their 

 prey. But it is in the circumstances in which they continue their kind 

 that these animals show an eminent superiority. Other fish deposit their 

 spawn, and leaye the success to accident ; these never produce above one 

 young, or two at the most, and this the female suckles entirely in the manner 

 of quadrupeds, her breasts being placed, as in the human kind, above the 

 navel. Their tails also are different from those of all other fish ; they are 

 placed so as to lie flat on the surface of the water ; while the other kinds have 

 them, as we every day see, upright or edgeways. This flat position of the tail 

 enables them to force themselves suddenly to the surface of the water to 

 breathe, which they are continually constrained to do." 



With such a generally admirable account of the leading features of their 

 organisation, it is marvellous how naturalists could have failed to recognise 

 the true affinities of the cetaceans, and continued to class them among 

 fishes, instead of transferring them to mammals. Indeed, almost the only 

 error in the foregoing account is the portion relating to the " spouting " of 

 cetaceans ; this error being by no means extinct among non-zoological per- 

 sons even at the present day. Instead of the water thrown up in the air 

 when a whale "spouts" having been taken in at the mouth and expelled 

 through the nostrils, it is mainly the condensed vapour from the creature's 

 breath, although when a whale commences to spout or blow before it has 

 quite reached the surface, a certain quantity of the superincumbent water 

 is thrown up with the breath. 



Cetaceans, then, are neither more nor less than highly specialised mammals 

 which have assumed a fish-like form in correlation with the needs of a purely 

 aquatic mode of existence. Although a few are found in large rivers, the 



