ORDER CETACEA. 497 



has not seen it. Fabricius who describes Boops very well, 

 speaks only on hearsay touching Musculus, and seems to 

 think it the Nord-caper. His Rostrata which he charac- 

 terizes only by its extreme littleness, may be only the young 

 of Boops. Ascanius who has figured one very well, asks if 

 it may not be Musculus, without saying why it should not be 

 Boops. The same observation applies to Captain Scoresby, 

 who talks of three species, but has only seen and repre- 

 sented one, and confesses that the figures given by naturalists 

 are very embarrassing. 



"As for the third species, the Pike-headed Whale of Pen- 

 nant which some French writers call Baleine a museau 

 pointu, it is according to Pennant, Shaw, and all the Eng- 

 lish who have described it, nothing but Boops itself. Sib- 

 bald first called it piked whale, on account of the dorsal fin, 

 and it has been confounded with the BalcenaRostrataof some 

 writers which is the Hyperoodon ; besides, this denomina- 

 tion of pike-head would apply to the entire sub-genus. 



" There remains, then, but one distinction applicable to 

 those balaenae with folded throat, that is, diversity of size. 

 Mr. Scoresby gives to Boops forty-six feet in length ; Fa- 

 bricius fifty-four. Musculus should be much larger, and 

 even exceed the Common Whale in size. It would be, ac- 

 cording to Scoresby, sixty-six, and even eighty feet in 

 length, and much more according to Olafsen and Powelsen. 

 The Rostrata would be, in its smallest dimensions, seven- 

 teen, twenty, or twenty-five feet. But who, considering 

 that these remarks are founded on individuals beheld singly, 

 at great distances of time and place, and by divers ob- 

 servers, shall hazard the assertion that such differences are 

 not the result of age ? 



" However, if it should be proved that but one Rorqual 

 exists in the Northern Seas, it may still be possible that 

 other seas may contain different species. 



61 Were we to trust to the list of citations given by nomen- 



