TiirMP.ru. n\< T.i;\l\<; Itl'liKKTUS. 29 



In answer to a letter of inquiry from Profess.tr Kami, I'n.t.-ssui Tniuiliiill wrote as follows: 



HARTFORD, February 1, 1880. 



Di. \u I'uoi i.ssni; p, \n:i>: Vour query of January 29 just now comes to hand. Isn't tli:it 

 troublesome Dubcrtux rlui<linsnli'nsi>t satisfactorily disposed of yet t More than twenty one years 

 ago (iii November. Is.'iSj the Kev. S. C. Newman, of Pawtucket, questioned Professor Agassi?, on 

 the snbjcet. His reply \v;is. that having looked in the only work in which ho snpjtosed the desin-d 

 information was likely to be Ibiuiil N.-mnich's Pollyglottcn Lexicon he could only say that it did 

 not e\eii eontain tlie name I >ul>rrtus." The correspondence, so far unsatisfactory, was printed in 

 the " Providence- Journal," December 9. The next day the Hon. Albert (1. (iivi-ne wrote to the 

 ''.Journal" that "before and at the time of the granting of the charter of Rhode Island, ' DuhertiiH' 

 was the word used to distinguish the uperm whale from the common or right whale," and referred 

 for Ins authority to the description given by Sir Thomas Browne "of the spermaceti whale," 

 whieh "mariners (who arc not the best nouienclators) called a Jubartas, or rather Gibbartas." Mr. 

 (lieene eame ver.v near being right, and undoubtedly teas right in identifying the "Dubertus" of 

 the charter with the ".luharias" or "Gibbartas" of the old whale fishermen; but he was wrong on 

 the main point that either "Jubartiis" or "Dubertus" was a distinctive name of the sperm whale, 

 except by a 'vulgar error" of the Norfolk mariners, who, as Sir Thomas Browne understood, "are 

 not the best nomeiiclators." The ".Jnhartas, r "Cibhartus," or "Gubartas" as the name which, by 

 an error of the engrossing clerk, appears as "Dubertus" in the llhode Island charter, was 

 \arionsly written by naturalists in the seventeenth century was a Finback, the " Balwna Nova 

 A Hi/lite" as Klein calls it, the " Jupiterrisch'" of the Dutch whalers, Balecnoptera Jubartes of 

 Laecpede. (The last name I heard for it was, I think, Sibbaldius tubcrosus ; but this was a year 

 or two ago, and it may have been rechristened a dozen times since then.) The name, however, has 

 been applied to more than one species of Finback, for naturalists, when dealing with cetacea, were 

 not, in the last century, much better "nomenclatora" than the English mariners ; but it has always 

 been restricted to the Balamopteridee, and has never designated any species of either tperm or 

 riyht whales. 



The history of the name is cnrions. Rondelet ("De Piscibus"lib. xvi, p. 482) gives a figure of 

 a liahena Vera" (drawn from life, he says) which "the whale fishers of Saintonge call Gibbar, a 

 Gibbero Dorso, that is, raised in a hnrnp, on which is the fin." From this provincial name came 

 (iHibui-tiis. <!nhnrtnx, Jiibart, Jubarten, Jupiter, and half a dozen other corruptions, introduced first 

 among mariners, and afterwards adopted or recognized as synonyms by naturalists, and distributed 

 among three or four different species. 



Laco"pede, under Balasnoptera Jubartex, includes Bafona boops (Gmelin), and " probably the 

 sulphur-bottom of the west coast of North America," the Jubartes of Klein, and the Jupiter Finch, 

 described by Anderson, as well as Baleine Jubarte of Bonnaterre (Encyc. M<$th.). 



Klein ("Misc.Pisc.^" 11, 13) says that the whale catchers have corrupted the name of the Jupiter, 

 or I'iscis Jovis, to Jubartes, which is reversing the actual process of corruption. He calls this the 

 "Whale of New England." 



Anderson, cited by Lace"pede, in "Nachrichten von Island, Gronland, etc.," p. 220, describes " the 

 Jupiter or Jnpiterfisch " as a kind of fin-fish, saying that its name, without doubt, comes from that 

 of Gubartes or Gibbartas, which has been given it by others, and which is itself a corruption of 

 the Miseayan (iiblmi; 



Bnt Laclpede makes " Battrna nodosa," "Humpback Whale of the English," and Balcena 

 gibbosaf the Whitlcs of New England, and refers to Bopnaterre. who separates le Gibbar, EngL 

 Fintish, from la Jubarte B. boops. Between Gibbar and Gibbosa, Jupiter and Gubartvs, the things 

 get rather mixed. 



