The Zoologist — January, 1873. 8357 



Catalogue of the Whales and Dolphins (Cetacea) inhahiting or 

 incidentally visiting the Seas surrounding the British Islands. 

 By Dr. J. E. Gray, F.R.S., &c. 



The study of the cetaceous animals of these islands has been 

 gradually improving, and although I believe we have much to learn, 

 yet we have a better knowledge of them than of the whales of 

 any other country; no doubt this is partly owing to our insular 

 position. The accounts of these animals- in our British Faunas are 

 mere compilations, and Dr. Fleming is the only author of such a 

 work who appears to have seen a British whale in the flesh. 

 Turton, in 1807, indicates eighteen species, which are reduced by 

 Fleming (in 1828) to sixteen, and by Jenyns (in 1835) and Bell (in 

 1837) to fourteen species, the latter regarding three or four speci- 

 mens which had been treated as distinct species by other authors, 

 as a single species, without any more reason than his predecessors 

 had had for separating them. In the * Annals and Magazine of 

 Natural History' for 1846 (xvii. p. 82) I gave a list of the British 

 Cetacea, containing seventeen species, which T had the opportunity 

 of personally examining, either entire or in osteological remains, 

 sufficient to enable me to determine them. In this paper I record 

 for the first time as British, Megaptera longimana (erroneously 

 printed "longipinna"), Lagenorhynchus albirostris, and Grampus 

 Cuvierii, considering it and Delphinus Rissoanus and D. griseus as 

 the same species. In the 'Proceedings of the Zoological Society' 

 for 1847 (p. 117) I published some additional observations on the 

 "Cetacea of the British Islands," in wliich I pointed out how the 

 skeleton of Dr. Knox's Balsena maxiraa-borealis differed from that 

 of Physalus Antiquorum, and should be called Physalus borealis, 

 which Prof. Turner has lately shown is the same as P. Sibbaldii. 

 In the ' Proceedings of the Zoological Society' for 1864 I published 

 a paper on the " Cetacea which have been observed in the Seas 

 surrounding the British Islands," in which I attempted to condense 

 all the original matter in the various works on the British whales 

 and dolphins and the results of my examination of all the specimens 

 I could collect. In this paper I described thirty species, belonging 

 to twenty genera, and illustrated it with figures of the more cha- 

 racteristic bones. ]\Iore lately Professors Flower, Turner and 

 Burmeister have paid much attention to the anatomy of these 

 animals. 



SECOND SERIES — VOL. VIII. " D 



