Owen— Observations on the Zeuglodonts. 409 
at which the celebrated Paleontologist of Neufchatel had arrived, 
in 1835, respecting the Pliocene character of the portion of jaw and 
teeth from the Miocene ‘grés marin’ of Malta. But the name 
Squalodon was quite as significative of the conclusion at which the 
Palzontologist of Bordeaux had arrived, in 1840, as to the transitional 
character between Iguanodons and Sharks-of the animal owning the 
portions of jaws with teeth from the ‘grés marin’ of Léognan. 
If the error-suggesting character of the name, which is barbarous 
to boot, does not weigh with M. Van Beneden against the fact of its 
having first designated the fossils from Léognan described in 1840, 
with what claim to consistency can he reject the classical name 
Phocodon, which first generically designated the fossils from the 
Miocene of Malta, described in 1835, and figured as far back’ as 
1670 ? 
Prof. Von Beneden appears to us to mete out one measure to one 
individual, and another to another, and not to be governed by prin- 
ciples which have no respect to persons. 
We may sympathize with goodnatured and indulgent sentiments 
that sway, for the conservation, on the sole ground of priority, of 
a generic name, although it may express obtrusively an erroneous or 
absurd conclusion, and be of barbarous construction besides. But 
then we require that the same sole principle of priority should be, 
at least, equally operative in regard to a legitimately constructed 
generic name, and one which does not shock the judgment by sug- 
gesting affinities very remote from truth. In this predicament we 
hold to be the Phocodon of Agassiz and the Balenodon of Owen. 
The latter generic name was proposed for the physeteroid Cetacean 
to which, in the year 1840, I referred the larger petrified lania- 
riform teeth from the ‘ Suffolk Crag.’ In my account of form, struc- 
ture, and microscopical characters of these teeth, in the ‘ History of 
British Fossil Mammalia, I compared them with the teeth of the 
Cachalots, and also, from the proportion of the number of teeth 
with the number of Cetacea represented by fossil bones, and espe- 
cially ear-bones, with the Ziphius of Cuvier. ‘These proportions, 
I wrote, ‘would indicate that the teeth were less numerous in the 
extinct Cetaceans, from which they have been derived, than they 
are in the Cachalot. . The recent Ziphius has but a single tooth on 
each side of the lower jaw when full grown, like the great Del- 
phinus tridens of our own seas’ (Op. cit., p. 541). 
The petrotympanic bones or ‘ Cetotolites’ described and figured 
in the same work are referred to another genus. alenodon phy- 
saloides is described in a section distinct from the family Balenide 
(p. 542). 
Balenodon, or Phalainodon, signifies a genus of Cachalot-like or 
Ziphioid Cetacea, represented by the fossil teeth resembling those 
figured at p. 525, fig. 219, in contrasted contiguity with the “Cacha- 
lot’s tooth, fig. 218 ; ; at p. 586, fig. 226, and at p. 587, fig. 227. 
Subsequent discoveries have proved that these Cetacean teeth, or 
the majority of them, belong to a genus or genera more nearly 
related to Ziphius than to Physeter, and to be ‘ Ziphioid,’—if, indeed, 
