Cetacea. 7121 



Meri, in his * History and Description of the old French Colony of 

 St. Domingo,' relates that in his time (1785), in the months of March, 

 April and May, as many as five-and-lwenty vessels from the North 

 Aii>erican States could be seen on the coast off Sale Trou, near Jacmel, 

 fishing for cachelot whales, and, he adds, for souffleurs [Balanoplera) ; 

 and that this fishery was with equal spirit pursued within the gulf to 

 the west of the colony ; that is, within the bight, in which 1 saw the 

 cachelot breach. The whale-fishers resorted to Turk's Island to boil 

 their oil.* 



Balaena msy ticetus is generally believed to be the largest of the true 

 Balaenae, and it rarely attains to 70 feet long, according to a very high 

 authority, the late Rev. Capt. Scoresby ; but Mr. Polack, whose 

 work on New Zealand contains much original matter concerning the 

 great cetals of the Southern Ocean, states that B. antarctica " not un- 

 frequently attains the length of 70 feet, and the breadth where the 

 flipper is placed (which is the thickest part) is often 18 feet. The 

 female is invariably the larger." B. australis is stated rarely to exceed 

 fifty feet in length. Again, the head in Balaena approaches to one- 

 third of the entire length, while in the " finners " and " hunch-backs " 

 it constitutes about a fourth. Lastly, the configuration of the chief 

 bones of the " flipper " or limb, is very different in the Balaenae to what 

 is seen in the others, as shown by Cuvier's figures in the ' Ossemens 

 Fossiles.' These various considerations enable me to pronounce with 

 confidence on the genus of the two great individuals which have been 

 stranded, of late years, on the eastern shores of the Bay of Bengal. 



The following notice of the 90-foot specimen (as alleged) that wats 

 cast upon the Chittagong coast in 1842 (in about lat. 21° North.), is 

 taken from a letter that appeared in the ' Friend of India ' newspaper 

 for September 15th of that year. It appears that "early on the 

 morning of the 15th of August, the attention of the people of Cox's 

 Bazaar and those of Muskal Island were attracted by something in 

 appearance like a capsized hull of a large vessel floating on the surface 

 of the sea, coming towards the mouth of the Muskal river, and when it 

 approached near the land they perceived that it was a living creature, 

 by its continually spouting up water into the air ; and by the middle 

 of the day it cast itself on the shore of the west side of Muskal Island. 

 By the assistance of the flood and the surf of the sea it was brought 

 completely on shore, where, as soon as it was landed, it appeared to 

 be in great distress, for it roared very loudly, similar to the roar of an 



uiuralisi's Sojourn in Jamaica,' p. 353. 



* ' A Nai 



xviii. 2 u 



