39 



Ey repeated visits to Maroubra Beacli, by diligent search, 

 by sifting tbe sand, and offering premiums to residents near the 

 spot for the recovery of the smaller bones, I have been able to 

 collect an almost perfect skeleton. Indeed, it may be said to be 

 complete, with the exception of the sternum, some phalanges of 

 the digits of left paddle and one side, of which we are deficient 

 in many of the ribs. 



The skeleton, without the invertebral cartilages, is about eight 

 and a quarter feet long, while the skull, from extremity of snout 

 to the hinder edge of the occipital condyles, is sixteen and a half 

 inches long. The great principal on which this skuU has been 

 constructed, is the same which prevails in the more enormous 

 sperm whale described in the preceding chapter. There is the 

 same want of symmetry, the same distortion of the component 

 bones, the same concavity of the upper surface of the head, 

 formed by the enormous development of the base of the 

 maxillaries, and finally, the same convexity of the roof of the 

 mouth. Here, moreover, we have some anomalies that render 

 the formation more divergent from that of dolphins, than even is 

 that o£ the skull of a true sperm. For instance, owing to the 

 great breadth of the vomer, we have a snout forming from the 

 notches almost an equilateral triangle, but with its apex blunt 

 and emarginate ; the point of the snout is thus short, truncated, 

 and emarginate, instead of being long and sharp as in the true 

 sperm. Here, also, the intermaxillaries barely pass beyond the 

 point of the maxillaries ; although, as in the true sperm whale, 

 the right intermaxillary mounts nearly to the occipital, high 

 above the right nostril, which is, as it were, almost carved out of 

 it. A great distinction is here perceived from the structure of 

 the genus Catodon, for instead of a perpendicular and semicircular 

 wall, formed by the maxillaries and doubled by the occipital, 

 forming the back of the great cavity on the summit of the head, 

 we see this cavity, although it is completely formed at the back 

 by the maxillaries, divided as it were into two unequal parts by 

 a ridge of bone which is twisted towards the left side of the head. 

 This prominent, thick, and sinuated ridge, which in the middle of 



