VI. On the recent Ziphioid Whales, with a Description of the Skeleton of Berardius 
arnouxi. By WiuiaM Henry Fiower, F.R.S., V.P.Z.S., Hunterian Professor 
of Comparative Anatomy, and Conservator of the Museum of the Royal College 
of Surgeons. 
Read November 7th, 1871. 
{Puates XXVII., XXVIII, XXIX.] 
THE interest which attaches itself to the remarkable division of the Cetacea which 
forms the subject of the present communication, is in some respects even greater than 
that which belongs to all the other members of the order. 
The Ziphioid Whales form a very compact group, closely united together by the 
common possession of very definite structural characters, and as distinctly separated 
from all other groups by equally definite characters. 
With the singular exception of Hyperoodon rostratus (the structure and habits of 
which species are as well known perhaps as those of any other Cetacean), no specimen 
of the group had ever come under the notice of any naturalist up to the commencement 
of the present century. Since that time, however, at irregular intervals, in various 
and most distant parts of the world, solitary individuals have been caught or stranded, 
now amounting to about thirty, which by some naturalists are referred to upwards of 
a dozen distinct species, and to very nearly as many genera. No case is recorded of 
more than one of these animals having been observed in one place at a time; and their 
habits are almost absolutely unknown. Their very presence in the ocean seems to pass 
unnoticed and unsuspected by voyagers, and even by those whose special occupation is 
the pursuit and capture of various better known and more abundant cetaceans, until 
one of the accidental occurrences just alluded to reveals the existence of forms of animal 
life of considerable magnitude (for they range between fifteen and thirty feet in length), 
and at least sufficiently numerous to maintain the continuity of the race. 
This comparative rarity at the present epoch contrasts greatly with what once obtained 
on the earth, especially in the period of the deposition of the Crag formations, and leads 
to the belief that the existing Ziphioids are the survivors of an ancient family which © 
once played a far more important part than now among the Cetacean inhabitants of the 
ocean, but which have been gradually replaced by other forms, and are themselves pro- 
bably destined ere long to share the fate of their once numerous allies or progenitors, 
These considerations are sufficient to lead to the endeavour to collect all available 
information with regard to them, and to put it in a convenient form for the guidance 
of those who may have opportunities to pursue their history further. Doubtless such 
VOL. VIII.—PaRT 111, September, 1872. 24 
