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XII. On the Osteology of the Cachalot or Sperm-BTiale (Physeter macrocephalus). 

 £1/ William Henry Flowee, F.R.S., F.R.C.S., F.L.S., F.G.S., F.Z.S., Conservator 

 of the Mitseum of the Royal College of Surgeons of England. 



Read November 14th, 1867. 



[Plates LV. to LXL] 



Introdxwtion. 

 OUE, present knowledge of the osteology of the Cachalots is derived from the following 

 sources : — 



1. Cuvier, in the ' Recherches sur les Ossemens Fossiles,' has given a description, clear 

 and pointed, but brief, of an imperfect skeleton, bought by him in London in 1818, and 

 still preserved in the Museum of the Jardin des Plantes. Figures on a very small scale 

 are given of the cranium and lower jaw, of the scapula, humerus, radius and ulna, and of 

 some of the vertebrae. The locality from which the animal was originally obtained is not 

 stated. As will be presently shown, the skeleton presents certain peculiarities, especially 

 in the number of the ribs and vertebrae, by which it diiSFers from all others known. 



In the same classical work, portions of the lower jaw of three other individuals con- 

 tained in the Paris Museum are figured and described. 



2. In the valuable posthumous work of Peter Camper, ' Observations Anatomiques 

 sur la Structure interieure et le Squelette de plusieurs especes de Cetaces,' Paris, 1820, 

 is a tolerably full description, and some very sketchy figures, of a mutilated cranium 

 preserved in the church at Scheveningen, in Holland ; and there are also some observa- 

 tions upon, and a figure of, another cranium, in the Paris Museum, taken from one of the 

 individuals cast ashore near Audierne, in Brittany, in 1784. The tympanic and petrous 

 bones, as well as the ossicula atiditus, are figured in considerable detail ; and drawings 

 are also given of the scapula and arm-bones, and of the atlas. The latter (from a speci- 

 men in the British Museum) is erroneously attributed to a Balmna, while the consolidated 

 mass of cervical vertebrae of a whale of this genus is described as that of a Cachalot. 



3. Lacepede (' Histoire Naturelle des Cetaces,' Paris, 1804) has given a figure of the 

 skull of the Audierne Cachalot in the Paris Museum, also of one of the ribs and some 

 vertebrae. 



4. Beale ('Natural History of the Sperm-Whale,' London, 1839) has given a general 

 description, unaccompanied by figures, of the skeleton of a full-gro^vn Sperm-Whale. 

 mounted in the Park at Burton Constable, near Hull. Certain errors in the articulation 

 of the skeleton, particularly of the hyoid bones, sternum, pelvis, and carpus, not de- 

 tected by Beale, necessarily introduced confusion into his description of these parts, 



VOL. VI. — PART VI. 2 X 



ERRATUM. 



Vol. VI. \t. :i(i9, line lb, for " rostro" read " i-t:i-rice." 



