7118 Cetacea. 



sported in the sea. His report by no means quieted their alarm ; 

 they stopped rowing from astonishment, and the oars fell from their 

 hands. Nearchus encouraged them, and recalled them to their duty, 

 ordering the heads of the vessels to be pointed at the several creatures 

 as they approached, and to attack them as they would the vessel of 

 an enemy in battle. The fleet immediately formed as if going to 

 engage, and advanced by a signal given, when shouting altogether, and 

 dashing the water with their oars, vrith the trumpets sounding at the 

 same time, they had the satisfaction to see the enemy give way ; for, 

 upon the approach of the vessels, the monsters ahead sunk before 

 them, and rose again astern, where they continued their blowing, 

 without exciting any further alarm. All the credit of the victory fell 

 to the share of Nearchus, and the acclamations of the people expressed 

 their acknowledgment both of his judgment and fortitude employed 

 in their unexpected delivery."* 



" The simplicity of this narrative," continues Mr. Vincent, "bespeaks 

 its truth ; the circumstances being such as would naturally occur to 

 men who had seen animals of this magnitude for the first time ; and 

 the better knowledge our navigators are possessed of, who hunt the 

 whale in his polar retreats, shows that he is sometimes as dangerous 

 an enemy as he appeared to the followers of Nearchus." 



It is somewhat remarkable, however, that I have been unable to dis- 

 cover a single record, from the days of Nearchus to the present time, 

 of the occurrence of great whales in the Indian seas north of the 

 Equator, with the exceptions only of one huge fellow, described to have 

 been 90 feet in length and 42 feet in diameter, which was stranded 

 upon the Chittagong coast in 1842; another of 84 feet in length, which 

 was stranded upon an islet south of Ramri and east of Cheduba on the 

 Arakan Coast in 1851 (as noticed by myself in the Asiatic Society's 

 •Journal,' vol. xxi. p. 358 and vol. xxii. p. 414); and to these two 

 notices may be added the statement in the Rev. F. Mason's work on 

 the ' Natural History of the Tenasserim Provinces,' that " The whale 

 is found south of Mergui, and Capt. Lloyd named a bay a few miles 

 south of the parallel of 12° North, ' Whale Bay,' from the circumstance 

 he says, ' of its being resorted to by numerous whales, and its being 

 the only part of the coast where I have seen them.' "f 



* Vincent's ' Voyage of Nearchus,' p. 269. 



t I have since obtained information of one of the largest size which was stranded 

 near Karachi some years ago, and also of two during the present yeiir (1859) in Ceylon, 

 one near Galle, the other near Trincomali. Keferring to Dr. Kelaarl's ' Prodroraus 

 ' Faunae Zeylonicas,' published in 1852, we find it there stated that " Whales are very 



