538 MR. R. BROWN ON THE CETACEANS [NoV. 12, 



mass *. Though, per se, the tail has no power, yet as the instrument 

 through which the lumbar muscles (the tendinous attachments of 

 which seem to be prolonged into the cartilaginous substance of the 

 tail) work it exerts enormous force. The figure usually engraved in 

 boys' books of sea adventures, and copied from Scoresby's 'Account of 

 the Arctic Regions,' of a Whale tossing a boat and its crew up into 

 the air, is generally looked upon by all the whalers to whom 1 have 

 shown it as an artistic exaggeration. Accidents of this nature are 

 very rare, and never proceed to such an extent ; and I have no doubt 

 that Dr. Scoresby's artist has taken liberties with his description, 

 that worthy navigator being himself above any suspicion of exag- 

 geration for the sake of effect, (-apt. Alexander Deuchars, who has 

 now made upwards of fifty voyages into the Arctic regions, informed 

 me that he had known a Whale toss a boat nearly 3 feet into the 

 air, and itself rise so high out of the water that you could see beneath 

 it, but that, if Scoresby's figure was correct, the Whale must have 

 tossed the boat very many feet into the air — a feat which he did not 

 think was within the bounds of, if not possibility, yet of probability. 



The teats are hardly the size of a cow's, are placed about the 

 middle, and one inch from the edge of the sulcus, but in the dead 

 animal are almost universally retracted within the white-coloured 

 or spotted sulcus, iu the middle of which they are situated. The 

 milk is thick, rich, and rather sweet-tasted. The faecal evacua- 

 tions of the -Whale are red-coloured, most probably due to the 

 red Cetochili and other animals which form the bulk of its food. 

 The skin (including the cuticle) is about 1| inch in thickness all 

 over the body, but is rather thicker on the tail, on which organ, 

 however, it is of a uniform thickness. The hhihher varies from about 

 a foot to eighteen inches in thickness, tolerably uniformly throughout, 

 except on the head, &c. ; the colour is like lard or pork fat in young 

 animals, but in the older ones rosy-coloured, from the quantity of 

 nutrient blood-vessels in it. The flesh is dark and coarse-fibred, 

 but when properly cooked tastes not unlike tough beef. When the 

 French had whalers in Davis Strait, the sailors, with the usual 

 aptitude of their nation for cuisine, made dainty dishes of it ; but 

 cur seamen, imbued with the virulent dietetic conservatism of the 

 Saxon, prefer to grow scurvy-riddled rather than partake of this 

 coarse though perfectly wholesome food. 



The best figure of the Right Whale is that of Scoresby ; but in 

 Harris's 'Collection of Voyages'- there is a very good figure of the 

 animal (almost as good as Scoresby's), accompanied by a very 

 tolerable description. I think Scoresby's figure is erroneous, in so 

 far as I have never been able to see the prominence behind the head 

 which he figures ; and the notch shown in the outline figure of the 

 genus in the first edition of the 'British Museum Catalogue of 

 Whales' does not exist in nature ; but as Dr. Gray does not mention 



* A tolerably good account of these and other points in the economy of the 

 Cetacea, mixed up with a heterogeneous mass of errors, is to be found in the 

 (deservedly?) neglected 'Natural History of the Cetacea,' &c., by 11. AV. Dew- 

 hurst (1834). 



