PSEUDORCA' CRASSIDENS. 195 



up at Kiel, that I became convinced that some few trifling particulars in which the crania may, 

 perhaps, differ from each other, are at most only individual diflerences. 



Thus, as it may be considered as an indisputable fact, that in all the different cases 

 mentioned here, we have only to do with one and the same species, the next question will be, 

 whether this species has already been described or not ; for though it is not one of the dolphins 

 generally known in the Northern seas, it does not of course follow that it is an entirely unknown 

 form, generally speaking ; nor, as we shall see, is this the case. It is true that it may be sought 

 for in vain among the remaining more or less well-known species now in existence ; even that 

 one among the latter to which it has, perhaps, the greatest resemblance, the DelpJiinus feres, 

 from the Mediterranean, described by Bonnaterre,^ but never found again since his time, must, if 

 the description is in any way to be trusted, be quite a different animal, though it agrees with ourS) 

 as far as the length of the body and the number and size of the teeth are concerned. But the 

 case is different when we extend our researches to the fossil, or so-called fossil species, for 

 among these there is one, viz., Owen's Phocæna crassideni {Orca crassidens, Gray),^ to which 

 at all events it has a most striking resemblance, if, indeed, it is not quite identical with 

 it. This species is founded on a cranium and some other parts of a skeleton, which some 

 twenty years ago were dug up from beneath the layer of turf in the Great Fen in Lincolnshire, 

 not far from the town of Stamford. Thus the circumstances under which these remains are 

 found do not preclude the possibility of their belonging to a species still living, but hitherto 

 unknown, and though their appearance caused the distinguished naturalist, to whom we are 

 indebted for our information about them, to suppose that they were fossil, yet he has himself 

 alluded to such a possibility, improbable as it might have seemed to him. Owen has 

 described nothing but the cranium of his Phocæna crassidens, and his description is not detailed 

 enough to admit of any minute comparison between his cranium and ours, being, indeed, 

 especially intended to show the difference between the new species and the killer and the 

 ca'ing-whale ; in one particular, finally, the importance of which we shall examine more 

 closely, it may, perhaps, be doubtful whether his description agrees altogether with 

 the state of things as we have found them in o\\x dolphin, but on the other hand, the short 

 description is, on the whole, very appropriate, and the figures by which it is illustrated (viz., 

 two figures of the cranium," and one of the five foremost cervical vertebrae),^ not only show a 

 resemblance to our dolphin in the general outlines, but they present exactly those characters in 

 particular by which it is distinguished from all the other more or less kindred forms. I 

 therefore, believe, that we must really acknowledge this Phocæna crassidens of Owen, to be the 

 dolphin stranded on our coasts, however strange it may seem, that our first knowledge of a Cetacean, 

 of which great shoals are still, in our time, roaming about in our Northern sea, should have 

 come to us through an individual which, thousands of years ago, found its resting place on a sea- 



^ "Tableau Encyclopedique et Metliodique des trois regnes de la Nature," ' Cetologie,' par M. 

 TAbhe Bonnaterre, Paris, 1789, p. 27. 



- ' A History of British Fossil Mammals and Birds,' London, 1846, p. 516. 



■' ' The Zoology of the Voyage of H.M.S. Erebus and Terror,' " Mammalia," London, 1846, 

 p. 34. ' Catalogue of the Species of Mammalia in the collection of British Museum ;' part i, Cetacea, 

 London, 1850, p. 94. 



* L. c, fig. 213, p. 516 and fig. 216, p. 523. 



' L. c, fig. 214, p. 520. 



