NORTHERN SPECIES OF ORCA. 161 



in all quarters of the world, that the killers, which in their outward appearance may always be 

 easily distinguished from aU other toothed-whales by the extremely powerful structure of their 

 body, the large teeth in both jaws, and the high dorsal fin, not only feed on large fishes, but also 

 on warm-blooded animals, especially seals and porpoises, nay, that they even flock together in 

 order to attack the largest whales, tearing off their blubber and flesh with their teeth until they 

 die from loss of blood. 



Pliny seems to have received his information from the shores of the Atlantic, when he first 

 tells us (liber ix, cap. 15) that the whales {Balance) are not seen before the arrival of winter (ante 

 brumam), "in gaditano oceano," where they seek shelter in bays, in which they prefer to bring 

 forth their young ones, adding then that the Orcas know of these wanderings, being a species of 

 animal inimical to the whales, and only to be compared with an immense quantity of flesh, 

 horrible on account of its teeth. -The whales, he tells us, try to save themselves by flight, but the 

 Orcas oppose them, killing them in the narrow seas, or chasing them up on the shore. The 

 author of the ' Kongespeil ' (Mirror of Royalty) gives us a picture of their characters, perfectly 

 faithful to nature, in his description of the Vognhvaler : — " In their cruelty against other 

 Cetaceans," he says, " they are like dogs against other animals, herding together and 

 attacking great whales ; and where there is only one great whale they bite and weary it out until 

 it gets its death thereof." 



A strictly scientific account of these rapacious Cetaceans did not appear until Sibbald's 

 excellent work, ' Phalainologia Nova,' was pubhshed in lfi92. The year before, seven or eight of 

 these animals had been stranded in the Firth of Forth ; they seem to have been well-known visitors 

 to the Scotch fishermen, and the accounts which Sibbald received from them about the rapacious 

 nature of these Cetaceans agreed in the main with those of the ancient authors. But on this 

 occasion Sibbald also received accurate descriptions of their exterior from several eye-witnesses. 

 According to one of these descriptions one of two individuals had a length of eighteen feet, the 

 other of twenty-two feet, and both of them had, in either jaw, thirty teeth of different form and 

 size. A figure of one of the teeth is found in Sibbald's work, at the top of the second plate. 

 It is the very hindmost and smallest in one of the dental rows, apparently that of the 

 upper jaw. The colour of the body was said to be like that of a piebald horse (eq?ci 

 maculis variegati). In another of these descriptions sent to Sibbald, the animal is expressly 

 stated to have been a male twenty-four feet long, the dorsal fin to have been more than 

 three feet high, the belly snowy white, the rest of the body jet-black, with a large white 

 spot over either shoulder (humerus). Both these descriptions must certainly be called very 

 good, considering that they were given not by Sibbald, but by laymen at the end of the 

 seventeenth century. Sibbald expressed himself stiU more distinctly in another place about the 

 colour of the Orcas, using the following words : — " The back is black, the belly white, the 

 sides in the middle between these two colours sometimes parti-coloui-ed (versicolor), and divided 

 extremely prettily into white and black spots." With regard to their general size he says that 

 it is between the lengths of fifteen and twenty-five feet, and as to the number of the teeth he 

 adds to the statement given above of thirty teeth in either jaw, that some have only twenty 

 in either. 



After such a clear description of the manner of living, size, number of teeth, and highly 

 characteristic colour of the Orcas, it would hardly be supposed that they could in any case be 

 mistaken for any other Cetaceans. Such is, however, the case, and, strange enough, it will 



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