212 MAMMALIA. 
the whalers always endeavour to attack the animal from that 
quarter. If this species alone furnishes, as is asserted, all the 
spermaceti and ambergris of commerce, it must be very widely 
diffused, for these articles are drawn from the North and the 
South. Cachalots, without dorsal fins, have been taken even in 
the Adriatic.(1) The 
Puyserer, Lacep. 
Is a Cachalot with adorsal fin. ‘wo species only are distinguished 
among them, microps, and tursio or mular, and those, from the very 
equivocal character of teeth, arcuated or straight, sharp or blunt.(2) 
They are found in the Mediterranean as well asin the Arctic 
Ocean. Those of the latter are said to be the most inveterate 
enemies of the Seals. 
BaLzna, Lin. 
The Whales are equal in size to the Cachalots, and in the propor- 
tional magnitude of the head, although the latter is not so much 
enlarged in front; but they have no teeth, The two sides of their 
upper jaw, which is keel-shaped, are furnished with thin, compact, 
(1) We perceive no real difference between this Cachalot, of which we have 
good figures and several parts of the skeleton, and that of Roberson, Phil. Trans., 
Vol. LX, of which Bonnaterre has made a species under the name of trumpo, 
which is applied, at Bermuda, to a Cachalot, without any more precise indication. 
As to the Little Cachalot, P. catodon, Lin., no other difference is mentioned 
besides that of size, than that the teeth are sharper, a circumstance that may depend 
upon age. It is not even certain that those which have been produced are not 
those of some large Dolphin. : 
The Physeter macrocephalus of Linnzus, Cach. cylindrique of Bonnaterre, (genus. 
Puysatus of Lacep.) would have a good character in the distant location of its 
spiracle; but this species merely rests on a bad figure of Anderson, and no one has. 
ever seen any thing like it. 
The albicans of Brisson, huid-fisk of Egede and Anderson, converted by Gmelin. 
into a variety of the macrocephalus, is the beluga dolphin, which sheds its teeth at 
avery early age, a fact we have ascertained. 
(2) The only one tolerably well ascertained, is from a bad figure of Bayer, 
Act. Nat. Cur. If], pl, 1, taken from an animal thrown on shore at Nice. The 
name mular has been very vaguely applied to it; the mular of Nieremberg is a 
Cachalot, it is true ; but there is nothing to prove it is one species more than 
another. , 
As to the different indications of the Cachalots of authors, see my Oss. Foss. 
tom. V, p. 328, etseq. Add to them the figure given in the Journ. des Voyages, 
of February 1826, and that in the Voy. de Freycinet, pl. xii. | With respect to. 
the Cachalots described by M. de Lacepede, Mem. du Museum, .tom. IV, from 
Japanese drawings, the very nature of the document on which they rest forbids 
me from giving them a place here. ode 
