brevice])s, or sliort-headed sperm wliale o£ the Cape of Good 

 Hope; and tlie Physeter Ticrsio, or Black-fisli of the North Sea. 

 Now the larger skeleton lately set up by me in the Sydney 

 Museum clearly belongs to a species of the genus Catadon ; and 

 the problem to be solved is, whether it be identical or not, as a 

 species, with the Gatodon macrocephalus above-mentioned, which 

 is an European whale. Of this species, G. macrocephalus, the 

 British Museum only possesses one upper jaw, and three under 

 jaws. In the London College of Surgeons, there is, according to 

 Gray, the head of a foetus ; and at Paris there is a nearly perfect 

 skeleton ; — with this^last, therefore, I would more particularly 

 compare our Sydney skeleton, which has the great advantage of 

 being also perfect, and the history of which is as follows : — 



It was announced in the Sydney Morning Herald of the 5th 

 December, 1849, that the carcass of a sperm whale had been 

 found at sea and had been towed by the schooner " Thistle" into 

 the harbour of Port Jackson. As the curator of the Australian 

 Museum, I considered that the skeleton would form a valuable 

 addition to our collection ; so with the permission of the 

 Museum Committee, I lost no time in proceeding to Neutral 

 Bay, where the schooner then was at anchor, having a male whale 

 alongside. Mr. Williamson, the master of the vessel, as soon 

 as he was made acquainted with the object of my visit, offered 

 me most liberally the entire skeleton, with the exception of the 

 under jaw, which he was desirous of retaining for the sake of the 

 teeth. On my representing, however, to him the advantage of 

 our possessing a complete skeleton, he eventually consented to 

 my taking away the whole of the bones. The blubber portions 

 of the carcass had, on account of the oil, been removed previ- 

 ously to my arrival on the spot, but as soon as I was in posses- 

 sion of all that remained I proceeded to adopt proper measures 

 for cleaning the bones. After considerable difficulty in finding 

 persons willing to encounter so unpleasant, and as they imagined, 

 so unhealthy, a task — I at last succeeded in engaging four 

 Portuguese sailors, who had been some years employed in the 

 whale fishery. It was, however, then discovered that a portion 



