190 MAMMALIA. 
PuysETErR, Lacep. 
Is a Cachalot with a dorsal fin. Two species only are distinguished 
among them, microps, and tursio or mular, and those, from the very 
equivocal character of teeth, arcuated or straight, sharp or blunt.* 
They are found in the Mediterranean as well as in the Arctic 
Ocean. Those of the latter are said to be the most inveterate enemies 
of the Seals. 
Bartana, Lin. 
The Whales are equal in size to the Cachalots, and in the proportional 
magnitude of the head, although the latter is not so much enlarged in 
front; but they have no teeth. The two sides of their upper jaw, which 
is keel-shaped, or like a roof reversed, are furnished with thin, compact, 
transverse lamine, called whalebone, formed of a kind of fibrous horn, 
fringed at the edges, which serve to retain the little animals on which 
these enormous Cetacea feed. Their lower jaw, supported by two osseous 
branches arched externally and towards the summit, and completely un- 
armed, lodges a very thick and fleshy tongue, and when the mouth is 
closed, envelopes the internal part of the upper jaw, and the whalebone 
with which it is invested. These organs do not allow whales to feed on 
such large animals as their size might induce us to imagine. They live 
on fish, but principally on Worms, Mollusca, and Zoophytes, selecting, it 
is said, the very smallest, which become entangled in the filaments of the 
whalebone. ‘Their nostrils, better organised for the sense of smell than 
those of the Dolphins, are furnished with some ethmoidal plates, and ap- 
pear to receive some small filaments from the olfactory nerve. Their 
caecum is short. 
Bal. mysticetus,~ L.; Lacep. Cet. pl. 2 and 3, under the name of 
Nord-Caper, and Scoresby, Arct. Reg. II. pl. 12. (The Great 
sides that of size, than that the teeth are sharper, a circumstance that may depend 
upon age. Itis not even certain that those which have been produced are not those 
of some large Dolphin. 
The Physeter macrocephalus of Linnzeus, Cach. cylindrique of Bonnaterre, (genus 
Puysauus of Lacep.) would have a good character in the distant location of its spi- 
racle; but this species merely rests on a bad figure of Anderson, and no one has ever 
seen any thing like it. 
The albicans of Brisson, huid-fisk of Egede and Anderson, converted by Gmelin 
into a variety of the macrocephalus, is the beluga dolphin, which sheds its teeth at a 
very early age, a fact we have ascertained. 
* The only one tolerably well ascertained, is from a bad figure of Bayer, Act. 
Nat. Cur. III. pl. 1, taken from an animal thrown on shore at Nice. The name 
mular has been very vaguely applied to it; the mular of Nieremberg is a Cachalot, it 
is true; but there is nothing to prove it is one species more than another. 
As to the different indications of the Cachalots of authors, see my Oss. Foss. 
tom. V. p. 328, et seq. Add to them the figure given in the Journ. des Voyages, of 
February, 1826, and that in the Voy. de Freycinet, pl. xii. With respect to the Ca- 
chalots described by M. de Lacepede, Mem. du Museum, tom. IV. from Japanese 
drawings, the very nature of the document on which they rest forbids me from giv- 
ing them a place here. 
+ The phalaina of Aristotle and A®lian, which was an enemy of the Dolphin, ap- 
pears to have been a large cetaceous animal armed with teeth; the only true Whale 
known to Aristotle was his mysticetus, which had, says he, setze in the mouth in place 
of teeth; most probably the Whale, with the wrinkled throat, of the Mediterranean. 
