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XII. On the Osteology of the Cachalot or Sperm-Whale (Physeter macrocephalus). 
By Wiuu1am Henry Fuower, 7. BS., FRCS. FLAS, F.G.S., F.Z.S., Conservator 
of the Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons of England. 
Read November 14th, 1867. 
[Puates LV. to LXI.] 
Introduction. 
Our present knowledge of the osteology of the Cachalots is derived from the following 
sources :— 
1, Cuvier, in the ‘ Recherches sur les Ossemens Fossiles,’ has given a description, clear 
and pointed, but brief, of an imperfect skeleton, bought by him in London in 1818, and 
still preserved in the Museum of the Jardin des Plantes. Figures on a very small scale 
are given of the cranium and lower jaw, of the scapula, humerus, radius and ulna, and of 
some of the vertebre. The locality from which the animal was originally obtained is not 
stated. As will be presently shown, the skeleton presents certain peculiarities, especially 
in the number of the ribs and vertebra, by which it differs from all others known. 
In the same classical work, portions of the lower jaw of three other individuals con- 
tained in the Paris Museum are figured and described. 
2. In the valuable posthumous work of Peter Camper, ‘ Observations Anatomiques 
sur la Structure intérieure et le Squelette de plusieurs espéces de Cétacés,’ Paris, 1820, 
is a tolerably full description, and some very sketchy figures, of a mutilated cranium 
preserved in the church at Scheveningen, in Holland; and there are also some observa- 
tions upon, and a figure of, another cranium, in the Paris Museum, taken from one of the 
individuals cast ashore near Audierne, in Brittany, in 1784. The tympanic and petrous 
bones, as well as the ossicula audités, are figured in considerable detail; and drawings 
are also given of the scapula and arm-bones, and of the atlas. The latter (from a speci- 
men in the British Museum) is erroneously attributed to a Balena, while the consolidated 
mass of cervical vertebra of a whale of this genus is described as that of a Cachalot. 
3. Lacépéde (‘ Histoire Naturelle des Cétacés,’ Paris, 1804) has given a figure of the 
skull of the Audierne Cachalot in the Paris Museum, also of one of the ribs and some 
vertebre. 
4, Beale (‘Natural History of the Sperm-Whale,’ London, 1839) has given a general 
description, unaccompanied by figures, of the skeleton of a full-grown Sperm-Whale, 
mounted in the Park at Burton Constable, near Hull. Certain errors in the articulation 
of the skeleton, particularly of the hyoid bones, sternum, pelvis, and carpus, not de- 
tected by Beale, necessarily introduced confusion into his description of these parts. 
VOL. VI.—PART VI. 2x 
ERRATUM. 
Vol. VI. p. 369, line 18, for “vostro” read “ cervice.” 
