7120 Cetacea. 



herds, exhibits the dorsal fiii ; at least," he adds, " all that have come 

 under my observation, and if my memory serves me correctly, the 

 dorsal fm is about one-third or a little more from the head, and is well 

 developed." To cite further communications of the kind would be 

 mere repetition. 



No other Balaenidae attain the dimensions of the largest rorquals, 

 including the known examples stranded within the Bay of Bengal ; 

 and the peaked dorsal fin is of itself a distinction. Moreover, the 

 finless or right whales are restricted to cold latitudes, where only, it 

 would seem, they can obtain a sufficiency of their peculiar food, the 

 rorquals subsisting mainly on Cephalopoda. According to Scoresby, 

 the great Northern or Greenland whale {Balcena mysticetus) " has never 

 been seen beyond the limits of the Arctic Ocean." Another descends 

 more southward in the comparatively cold oceanic region of the 

 Northern Pacific. In the southern hemisphere there would also 

 appear to be two species recognised as such by seamen with whom I 

 have conversed, Balaena anstralis of Desmoulins and B. antarctica of 

 Gray. In the Timor seas, black whales in addition to sperm are stated 

 to exist in considerable numbers ; but those black whales I have been 

 assured are " hunch-backs," which are much more nearly akin to the 

 " finners " or rorquals, though I suspect them to be a small kind of 

 cachelot subsequently noticed under the name of Euphysetes Graii. 



The locality known as Wal-visch {i.e. whale-fish) Bay, latterly spelt 

 Walwich, on the East coast of South Africa, is considerably within 

 the southern tropic ; but the name may well refer to cachelots or sperm 

 whales. In a short account of Timor, published in Moor's ' Notes on 

 the Indian Archipelago,' we read that the coast people of the island of 

 Selvi (one of the Timor group) " are such expert fishermen that they 

 constantly take the species of whale called black-fish, which are often 

 20 feet long, and which afford oil inferior only to the spermaceti, 

 having the same substance in the head as the spermaceti whale. They 

 do not boil the blubber, but expose it to the sun in an inclined situ- 

 ation with a ditch at the bottom, into which the oil drains." A small 

 species of the Physeter group must be here intended ; but the black- 

 fish of the Bay of Bengal is my Globicephalus indicus. As for the 

 sperm-whale fishery in the Eastern Seas, the Sulu or Mindoro Sea 

 between Borneo and the Philippines, in from 50° to 100° East lati- 

 tude, is at present I believe the grand resort of the whalers. 



Sperm whales were formerly hunted off the shores of the Antilles. 

 Thus, the excellent observer, Mr. Richard Hill, of Spanish Town, 

 Jamaica, writes to his friend, Mr. P. H. Gosse, that " Moreau de St. 



