47 



those gentlemen. I must, however, iu candour confess that I am 

 disposed to suspect that the Paris skull has been badly described, 

 and that it may possibly, after all, belong to the same genus as 

 our cetacean. On the other hand, it is almost incredible, if the 

 genus Kof/la be identical with our Eupliysetes, that Mr. Gray 

 should have been silent on what certainly is by far the most 

 remarkable character of the latter's skull, namely, the heavy 

 ridge of bone that longitudinally divides the spermacetic cavity 

 into two unequal parts. There has been nothing like this 

 structure hitherto described among Oetacea. 



It is to be regretted that a barbarous and unmeaning word 

 like Kogia should have Ijeen admitted into the nomenclature of 

 so classical a group as the Cetacea ; and with respect to De 

 Blainville's trivial name breviceps, however good and characteris- 

 tic it may have been in conjunction with the genus Plii/sefer, it 

 is manifest, that when once these animals with short heads are 

 separated generically from true sperm whales, such a name has 

 the defect of belonging to all the species that may be found in 

 the genus, and consequently becomes a generic instead of a 

 specific epithet. There has, therefore, in the naming of our 

 animal been an endeavour to avoid both these defects, and it has 

 been called Euphysetes Grayii ; where the word Euphysetes, 

 namely, a good or easy hloioer, alludes to the enormous size of the 

 left nostril, and the specific name is given in honor of J. E. Gray, 

 Esq., chief of the Natural History Department in the British 

 Museum, a gentleman Avho has much distinguished himself in the 

 study of this order of mammals.* 



OF THE SPINAL COLUMN. 



The Euphysetes Grayii has forty-four vertebrae in addition to 

 the seven cervical ones ; but these cervical vertebrae are all so 



* If some odoriferous hero of the harpoon should here sing out, "Give us 

 a plain English name, and no nonsense ;" I have the satisfaction to inform 

 him that he can with considerable propriety call this whale "the new 

 codger,"and thus distinguish it from " the old codger,'^ which is Mr. Gray's 

 Kogia breviceps. 



