406 ON THE 



Tribes, which Linnaeus has placed in his seventh 

 and last order of Maromalia, under the denomi- 

 nation of Cete. 



These animals are readily to he distinguished 

 from the other divisions of Mammalia, hy their 

 living altogether in the ocean ; hy their external 

 form, which mostly resembles that of common 

 fishes ; by their having pectoral fins in the place 

 of legs and feet, by which, aided hy a horizontal 

 finny tail, their locomotion is produced ; and by 

 their possessing spiculae, or spout holes on the 

 top of the front of the head, through which they 

 eject with great violence the superfluous water 

 taken in by the mouth, when in the act of swal- 

 lowing. 



In every other particular, they resemble the 

 Mammiferous Quadrupeds ; for like them, they 

 have warm, red blood, with a double circulation 

 performed by a heart with two vent tides ahd two 

 auricles, and by arteries, similar in their construc- 

 tion and action to land animals*. They breathe by 

 perfect lungs in the place of gills, which obliges 

 them frequently to rise to the surface of the water 

 for a fresh supply of air. The structure of their 

 brain, of their thoracic and abdominal viscera, 

 and of their bones and muscles, is upon the same 

 principal as in the animals contained in the other 

 orders of mammalia, and like those animals, they 

 produce their young alive, and suckle them. So 

 that it is only in their external form, in their 



