410 Notices of British and Foreign Memoirs. 
they can be truly and satisfactorily shown to be generically distinct 
from Ziphius, Cuvier. 
But by those Paleontologists who, under the belief of such generic 
distinction, deem it requisite to come to the conclusion by a generic 
name, I hold that Balenodon has the priority of any other generic 
name* which, since the publication of the ‘History of British Fossil 
Mammals,’ 8vo., 1846, has been proposed for any of the Ziphioid 
fossils from the Miocene or older Pliocene of Antwerp or Suffolk. 
The mistaken reference, by Von Meyer, of a Zeuglodont to the genus 
to which I had referred the larger Physeteroid or Ziphioid teeth of 
the Crag gives no adequate ground for rejecting the generic name 
from the extinct Cetacea to which it truly applies. But in all the 
remarks which M. Van Beneden hazards upon Balenodon he betrays 
a want of acquaintance with the works and memoirs in which the 
Cetacean fossils of the Suffolk Crag have been described by me. 
Professor Van Beneden, e.g., writes, ‘ Cet animal’ (Stenodon len- 
tianum, V. Ben.) ‘était pour Hermann Von Meyer différent des 
“Wallartigen Thiere ;” et comme on avait trouvé en méme temps une 
dent qui woffrait pas de caractéres trés-précis, il crut avoir affaire 
& un animal semblable 4 celui de Helixtown, auquel R. Owen avait 
donné le nom de “ Balenodon.”’ But, in the Memoir on the Cetacean 
Fossils brought by Professor Henslow from the Crag at Helixtown, 
in the ‘ Proceedings of the Zoological Society of London,’ Dec. 13, 
18438, the specimens are referred, as in the ‘ History of British Fossil 
Mammalia,’ not to Balenodon, but to Balena. After a comparison 
of the petrotympanic bones, I expressly stated— We are thus 
enabled to determine that the majority differ from the tympanic 
bones of the Delphinide, including Grampus and Hyperoédon, in 
having the hinder extremity of the bone simple, and not bilobed,’ &c. 
Several species of such Balene are defined from the characters of 
the more or less mutilated ‘ear-bones.’ More perfect examples of 
the smallest of these, e.g., B. gibbosa, subsequently acquired, have 
indicated ziphioid or physeteroid characters, and may be referred to 
Balenodon: but whatever may be the advance of our knowledge 
of the nature of that physeteroid or ziphioid Cetacean, there can be 
‘no plausible motive for changing the first generic name imposed 
upon it.’ As much of Balenodon physaloides, Ow., as is known, is 
sufficiently material and massive: its description occupies seven 
pages (pp. 5386-542), and is illustrated by five woodcuts (figs. 219, 
226, 227, 228, and 229) of the work in which the genus and species 
are defined. It is purely gratuitous to stigmatize it as an offspring 
of the imagination.t 
Prof. Van Beneden sums up his useful Teor on the Zeuglo- 
donts as follows (p. 80) :— 
E. g., Dioplodon, Choneziphius, Hoplocetus. 
; ‘Ce genre est imaginaire, et le savant illustre qui a proposé ce nom de Baleno- 
don, dont les racines jurent de se trouver ensemble, ne saurait guere dire lui-méme 
quel genre d’animal il a entendu désigner sous ce singulier nom.’—P, 08. 
