3 



self Avas in doubt whetlier the cachalot o£ the Southern Pacific 

 niiglit not be specifically different from that of the Northern 

 Atlantic. He says that it is for naturalists to judge "whether 

 the differences observed by him in the inferior jaw of an 

 Antarctic cachalot, and the under jaw of a sperm whale cast 

 ashore on the coast of France, result from a mere distinction 

 in age or sex, or from a specific diff'erence. And he says, further, 

 that be does not imagine that naturalists will be able to decide 

 this question until they shall have been in possession of a com- 

 plete head of the Antarctic cachalot, to compare with that of the 

 Northern Atlantic animal, or until they shall, at least, have been 

 in possession of good drawings of the external figures of both 

 these cetaceans. Mr. Gray, of the British Museum, in No. 

 XIII of the Zoology of the Antarctic Yoyage of the "Erebus" and 

 "Terror," which was made under the command of Sir J. C. Eoss, — 

 a work that has more reference to the external appearance, than 

 to the anatomy of whales — also says, in 18iG, " I have no doubt, 

 from the analogy of other whales, that when we shall have had 

 the opportunity of accurately comparing the bones, and the 

 various proportions of the parts of the northern and southern 

 kinds of sperm, we shall find them distinct. Quoy gives an 

 engraving of a drawing of a sperm whale which was given him by 

 an English captain, and which is probably the southern whale. 

 He calls it Physeter polycyplms, because its back appears to be 

 broken into a series of humps, and Desmoulins re-names it 

 Physeter Australis.'" Mr. Gray, moreover, makes a family of 

 " the toothed whales," under the name of Catodonfidx, and to 

 this family he assigns three genera, viz., Catodon, Kogia, and 

 FTiyseier — their types being, respectively, the Gatodon macro- 

 cephalus, or sperm whale of the Northern Atlantic ; the Kogia 



what is more peculiar to sperm whales, namely, their possession of teeth 

 only in the under jaw. The French name cachalot is, according to 

 Cuvier, derived from the Basque word cachau, signifying tooth. It may 

 be here observed that the Basques had a right to name the animal, as 

 they appear to have been the first professional fishermen of the sperm 

 whale, the valuable products of which were comparatively unknown to 

 the ancients. 



