Thus we pee at once tliat while Cuvier's London skeleton 

 and the Sydney one come -wonderfully close to each other in 

 the proportions of the head to the whole length ; the York- 

 shire skeleton having a head so large in proportion to the 

 length, must belong to a different species. If the forty-nine 

 feet seven inches include the length of the intervertebral car- 

 tilages, the disparity will be still greater. As it is, according 

 to the Yorkshire proportions, the Sydney skeleton, which is- 

 thirty feet four and three-quarters inches long, ought to have 

 a head upwards of eleven feet long. Instead of which this skull 

 is only nine and a half feet long ; so that the head in our sperm 

 whale is consequently shorter in proportion to the body than 

 Beale's whale. It is the same in Cuvier's London whale ; yet 

 the figure of the sperm whale, as given by Frederic Cuvier, 

 and which appears to be that of the sperm whale of his brother 

 and of the IS"ortheru Atlantic Ocean, differs from the figure of 

 the Pacific sperm whale given by Beale, in having a larger head ;. 

 so that the Yorkshire skeleton could not possibly have belonged 

 to the same whale as that of which Beale made a drawing in the 

 Pacific. Is it true that Beale and others consider the difference 

 to result from a defect in F. Cuvier's figure, but I think reasons 

 have been now adduced for our believing that the drawings have 

 been taken from two different species. Of this, indeed, I shall 

 advance further proof hereafter. 



The principal materials which Cuvier possessed for laying the 

 foundation of all our knowledge of the osteology of the sperm 

 whale, were the head of an animal cast ashore at Audierne, iu 



