166 ESCHRICHT ON THE 



well 'known statements of sailors and inhabitants of coasts about ravenous whales were, without 

 further comment, also ascribed to this supposed Phjseter microps. This was especially done by 

 Lacépéde, who in the beginning of this century was looked upon as the arbitrator of Cetology. It 

 must, however, be confessed, that the error had scarcely any influence in determining the species 

 of any rapacious Cetacean examined. For no such animal was ever seen to want teeth in the 

 upper jaw. It was always a Delphinus with large teeth in both jaws, and a more or less high 

 dorsal fin. Nay, perhaps, the high-finned individuals were also everywhere distinguished from 

 those with low dorsal fins ; thus, especially by Lacépéde himself, only that he called the high- 

 finned ones (Z>. orca, Fabricii), by a new name Delphimis gladiator, and the low-finned ones 

 {Physeter microps, Fabricii), he named DelpJdnus orca. 



At length Cuvier undertook the great task of clearing the system from the numerous 

 species of Cetaceans resting on a perfectly uncertain foundation. Of the four Linnean species of 

 cachalots only one was retained, and also only one species of Orca. Among the more modern 

 cetologists, Schlegel is absolutely guided by Cuvier, and J. E. Gray, though he does not 

 follow Cuvier as far as the cachalots are concerned, retaining on the contrary Sibbald's two 

 large cachalots as forming each a species, yet agrees with Cuvier with respect to the Orcas, 

 as far as he does not beUeve in any difference of species between the high-finned and low-finned 

 specimens. On the other hand, he separates from the others, and no doubt with perfect right, 

 the killers from beyond the equator, and some fossil species. The same distingTiished English 

 cetologist has further, with no less justice, set the killers aside as a genus by themselves, 

 and more especially, he has separated them not only from the ca'ing-whales, but also from 

 certain more closely allied species, of which he has formed the genus Gravipus. It seems 

 to me, indeed, that the killers ought to be separated not only as a peculiar genus, but as a 

 peculiar group or family among the toothed-whales, because, in opposition to all the other 

 Cetaceans, they subsist, though not exclusively, yet to a very great extent, on warm-blooded 

 animals. 



It has already been related, that they have always been considered as very fierce carnivorous 

 animals among the inhabitants of coasts and seafaring people of all parts of the world. 

 Of late, the ancient accounts, a tolerably complete compilation of which is to be found in 

 Bishop Gunnerus's essay just quoted, have been considered very much exaggerated, if not almost 

 fabulous. In mentioning the enemies of the Greenland whale, and among them the thrasher 

 of the English sailors, a Cetacean which attacks large animals of its own order, the celebrated 

 whaler Captain Scoresby adds in a parenthesis:^ "If such an animal there be," with the 

 remark, that he at least has never witnessed a struggle between such an animal and a 

 whale. Mr. Frederick Debell Bennet, an English surgeon of great experience in the more 

 recent South Sea cachalot fishery, states," that small shoals of killers, as they are also called by 

 seamen, an appellation perfectly synonymous with the name thrasher just mentioned, have, 

 indeed, occasionally been observed by him, but that he has never been able to witness the least 

 trace of anything which would confirm the prevalent opinion about their blood-thirsty way of 

 living ; he adds, indeed, that the same traditions about their fierce temper are preserved by the 

 southern as by the northern whalers, but that they are as little founded on their own observa- 



^ ' Account of the Arctic Regions,' vol. i, (1820) p. 474. 



^ * Narrative of a "Whaling Voyage round the Globe/ vol. ii, (London, 1840) p. 239. 



