190 WHALES AND WHALE FISHERIES xiv 



and interest, as having long afforded material for a regular 

 and important branch of human industry. This is the 

 animal commonly called the " sperm whale," known in books 

 by its French name of cachalot, or its scientific designation 

 of Physeter macrocephalus, which, taken altogether not in 

 length, but in bulk and weight is the most colossal of all 

 animals. 



Although a contrary opinion prevailed at one time, it is 

 now fairly well established that there is but one species of 

 sperm whale, which has a remarkably wide geographical 

 distribution, being met with, usually in herds, or " schools " 

 as they are termed, in almost all tropical or subtropical seas, 

 but not occurring, except accidentally, in the Polar regions. 

 Not unfrequently specimens appear on the coasts of Great 



FIG. 8. 1 



Britain, but only as solitary stragglers, or as dead carcasses 

 floated northwards by the Gulf Stream. It is remarkable 

 that every case of these of which we have an accurate record 

 has been an old male. The females and young appear never 

 to wander so far from their usual haunts, although they have 

 been met with in the Mediterranean, and even on the Atlantic 

 coast of France. The sperm whale (Fig. 8) is a strange- 

 looking animal, and cannot be mistaken for any other 

 cetacean. The head is about one-third of the whole length 

 of the animal, very massive, high, and truncated in front, and 

 owes its huge size and remarkable form mainly to the great 

 accumulation of a peculiar form of oily matter, contained in 

 great cells, connected with the nasal passages, and filling the 



1 All the figures which illustrate this paper are taken, with the kind per- 

 mission of the publishers, Messrs. A. & C. Black, from Flower & Lydekker's 

 Introduction to the Study of Mammals. 



