MAMMALIA—PORPOISE. 395 
A shoal of dolphins will frequently attend the course of a ship, for the 
scraps that are thrown overboard, or the barnacles adhering to their sides. 
A shoal of them followed the ships of Sir Richard Hawkins, upwards of a 
thousand leagues. Their gambols and evolutions on the surface of the 
water are often very amusing. A dolphin has been known to spring forward 
more than twenty feet at a single bound. They inhabit the Atlantic and 
Pacific oceans. 
The flesh, though tolerably well tasted, is dry and insipid; the best parts 
are near the head. It is seldom eaten but when young and tender. Dols 
phins are said to change their color before they die, and again after they 
tre dead. 
THE. POR POTS E.) 







In its general form, the porpoise, or porpus, very much resembles the 
dolphin. It is, however, somewhat less in size, and has a snout much 
broader and shorter. It is generally from six to seven feet in length; its 
pody is thick towards the head, but grows slender towards the tail, forming 
the figure of a cone. In each jaw are forty-four to fifty teeth, small, sharp 
pointed, and moveable; and so placed that the teeth of one jaw lock into 
those of the other. The eyes are small, as is the spout-hole at the top 
of the head. In colors the back is black, and the belly whitish, but they 
sometimes vary. 
Porpoises are very numerous in the river St Lawrence, whee there 1s a 
white kind. They are seldom seen, except in troops of six or seven to 
thirty and upwards; and, like the dolphin, they are very agile and sportive. 
In the most tempestuous weather, they can surmount the waves, and 
pursue their course, without injury. Seamen have a superstitious detesta- 
tion of them, because they believe their appearance to be ominous of ap- 
proaching storms. 
These animals live chiefly on the smaller fish. At the season when 
mackerel, herrings, pilchards, and salmon appear, the porpoise swarms; 

1 Delphinus phocena, Lin. 
