368 ME. W. H. FLOWER OX THE OSTEOLOaT OF THE SPERM-WHALE. 



animals of such great powers of locomotion : they are known to round Cape Horn ; and 

 in fact there is scarcely a spot between the two seas where they have not actually been 

 encountered. Whatever may have been the case in former times, the Cachalot can 

 hardly now be considered a regular inhabitant of the seas bordering Europe. Those 

 that occasionally appear are either solitary stragglers, or more often dead and partially 

 decomposed carcasses, floated northwards, probably by the Gulf-stream. The occurrence 

 of a " school " of Cachalots, like that at Citta Nuova, in the Adriatic, in 1853, is quite 

 exceptional *. 



Many museums contain lower jaws of very small Cachalots, which, judging from the 

 condition of the bones and teeth, are perfectly adult. One, in the Museum of the 

 Eoyal College of Surgeons, is 6' 10" in length. The symphysis is 40"; and it has 

 twenty-two teeth on each side. Another, in the Oxford University Museum, is 7' 0^" 

 in length. These are usually considered to be the jaws of the female of the common 

 species ; if this is not the case, they must indicate a second species of the genus. An 

 entire skeleton, or even a cranium of a female Cachalot, is still a desideratum, and one 

 which ought soon to be supplied, as, owing to its comparatively small size, it would 

 not be beyond the means, as to cost or space, at the disposal of many museums. 



It is a singular circumstance that the deformed and twisted jaws before mentioned 

 appear all to be of a size corresponding with those just referred to. 



There is good reason to believe that, as with all the other large Cetaceans, the mag- 

 nitude of the Cachalot has been greatly exaggerated. Leaving out of the question all 

 earlier and even less trustworthy descriptions, Beale states that he was present at the 

 capture of a Cachalot which measui'ed the length of eighty-four feetf ; while F. U. 

 Bennett says, " the largest size authentically recorded of the Sperm-whale is seventy-six 

 feet in length, by thirty-eight in gkth ; but whalers are well contented to consider sixty 

 feet the average of the largest examples they commonly obtain "J. It is probable that 

 the natural and often unconscious proneness to exaggerate the size of such an object, 

 especially where measurement with anything like scientific accuracy is almost im- 

 possible from the very circumstances of the case, must be allowed for, in the former 

 of these statements. The only indications on which we can absolutely rely are the 

 osseous remains, which perfectly corroborate the latter part of the information given by 

 Bennett. No single specimen of all the different skeletons, or fragments of skeletons, 

 some of which are quite aged, examined by me give any evidence of a greater length 

 of skull and vertebral column than fifty-five feet, if quite so much. The soft parts 

 of the head, and the portion of the flukes projecting beyond the median notch of 

 the tail, which corresponds to the termination of the bony column,might bring the 

 animal in the flesh up to sixty feet ; and from the tolerable uniformity in the size 

 of all the adult skeletons, skulls, and lower jaws (now in considerable quantity) 



* Heckel, in Wiener Sitzungster. d. Math.-Naturw. CI. Btl. ii. (18-53) p. 765. 



t 0^5. cit. p. 15. J ' Narrative of a Whaling Yoyage,' vol. ii. p. 154. 



