310 ME. W. H. FLOWER OJS THE OSTEOLOGY OP THE SPEEM-WHALE. 



5. In a small octavo work, entitled " History and Description of the Skeleton of a 

 New Sperm -Whale lately set up in the Australian Museum, by William S. Wall, 

 Curator," &c., Sydney, 1851, the description, although defective in many respects, is on 

 the whole the most complete yet published, as the skeleton which is the subject of it, 

 although very young, was in a tolerably perfect state. The memoir is accompanied by 

 a rudely executed drawing, on a small scale, of the entire skeleton, and also of the 

 sternum, hyoid, and pehic bones*. 



6. In the 'Descriptive Catalogue of the Osteological Series of the Museum of the 

 Royal College of Sm-geons' (1853), Professor Owen has given a somewhat detailed account 

 of the form and relations of the cranial bones in a very instructive skull of a foetal 

 Cachalot contained in that collection. 



7. A woodcut figure of the same skull has been given by Professor Huxley in his 

 'Elements of Comparative Anatomy,' 1864. 



8. The petrotympanic bones of a Cachalot from the same Museum are figured in 

 Owen's ' British Fossil Mammals.' 



9. Dr. Gray (Proc. Zool. Soc. 1864, p. 590, and 1865, p. 440) has given figures, taken 

 from photographs, of the cervical vertebrae of two Cachalots in the Museum at Sydney, 

 which he regards as belonging to distinct species. 



Numerous as the above-noticed works may appear, the information contained in them 

 is but fragmentary, and very much still remains to be done before our knowledge of the 

 osteological characters of this huge and strangely modified Mammal can be said to be 

 placed on the footing which its interest ought to secure for it. 



In the present communication it is my intention, — 



I. To give a description, accompanied by detailed drawings, of the nearly perfect 

 skeleton of an adolescent male Cachalot, which was taken in the latter part of the year 

 1864 off the south-west coast of Tasmania, and the bones of which were prepared with 

 great care and at considerable trouble and expense by W. L. Crowther, Esq., M.R.C.S.E., 

 of Hobart Town, and by him presented to the Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons. 



II. To compare this skeleton with other skeletons or parts of skeletons which are 

 available for the purpose. As materials for this portion of the work I may especially 

 mention : — 



a. Various portions of the skeletons of Cachalots from the Tasmanian seas, also pre- 

 sented to the Museum of the College of Surgeons by Mr. Crowther, comprising the 



* It is stated by Dr. G. Bennett (Gatherings of a Naturalist, 1860, p. 162) that the real author of this work 

 was the late WOiiam Sharpe Macleay. But as there is no indication of this in the work itself, as Wall's name 

 alone appears on the titlepage, and as he has been allowed by Macleay to identify himself with the author 

 of the book, especially when speaking in the iirst person of acts connected with the preparation of the skeleton 

 (see pp. 4, 5, &c.), which Dr. Bennett himself attributes to "Wall, I shall always quote it under the latter name 

 only. Some authors have, without any explanation, quoted this work as " Macleay's " — a practice which must 

 necessarily introduce confusion into cetological literature. 



