368 MR. W. H. FLOWER ON THE OSTEOLOGY OF THE SPERM-WHALE. 
animals of such great powers of locomotion: they are known to round Cape Horn; and 
in fact there is scarcely a spot between the two seas where they have not actually been 
encountered. Whatever may have been the case in former times, the Cachalot can 
hardly now be considered a regular inhabitant of the seas bordering Europe. Those 
that occasionally appear are either solitary stragglers, or more often dead and partially 
decomposed carcasses, floated northwards, probably by the Gulf-stream. ‘The occurrence 
of a “school” of Cachalots, like that at Citta Nuova, in the Adriatic, in 1853, is quite 
exceptional *, 
Many museums contain lower jaws of very small Cachalots, which, judging from the 
condition of the bones and teeth, are perfectly adult. One, in the Museum of the 
Royal College of Surgeons, is 6’ 10" in length. The symphysis is 40"; and it has 
twenty-two teeth on each side. Another, in the Oxford University Museum, is 7! 03" 
in length. These are usually considered to be the jaws of the female of the common 
species; if this is not the case, they must indicate a second species of the genus. An 
entire skeleton, or even a cranium of a female Cachalot, is still a desideratum, and one 
which ought soon to be supplied, as, owing to its comparatively small size, it would 
not be beyond the means, as to cost or space, at the disposal of many museums. 
It is a singular circumstance that the deformed and twisted jaws before mentioned 
appear all to be of a size corresponding with those just referred to. 
There is good reason to believe that, as with all the other large Cetaceans, the mag- 
nitude of the Cachalot has been greatly exaggerated. Leaving out of the question all 
earlier and even less trustworthy descriptions, Beale states that he was present at the 
capture of a Cachalot which measured the length of eighty-four feet +; while F. D. 
Bennett says, “the largest size authentically recorded of the Sperm-whale is seventy-six 
feet in length, by thirty-eight in girth; but whalers are well contented to consider sixty 
feet the average of the largest examples they commonly obtain”. It is probable that 
the natural and often unconscious proneness to exaggerate the size of such an object, 
especially where measurement with anything like scientific accuracy is almost im- 
possible from the very circumstances of the case, must be allowed for, in the former 
of these statements. The only indications on which we can absolutely rely are the 
osseous remains, which perfectly corroborate the latter part of the information given by 
Bennett. No single specimen of all the different skeletons, or fragments of skeletons, 
some of which are quite aged, examined by me give any evidence of a greater length 
of skull and vertebral column than fifty-five feet, if quite so much. The soft parts 
of the head, and the portion of the flukes projecting beyond the median notch of 
the tail, which corresponds to the termination of the bony column,might bring the 
animal in the flesh up to sixty feet; and from the tolerable uniformity in the size 
of all the adult skeletons, skulls, and lower jaws (now in considerable quantity) 
* Heckel, in Wiener Sitzungsber. d. Math.-Naturw. Cl. Bd. ii. (1853) p. 765. 
+ Op. cit. p. 15. t ‘ Narrative of a Whaling Voyage,’ vol. ii. p. 154. 
