Natwelle des Cetaces. 177 



other respectable individual who had adopted the majority of these 

 subdivisions was M. F. Cuvier himself, who, in his Mammiferes, for 

 years has familiarly discoursed of Delphinapteri, Delphinorhynci, 

 Phocaense, &c. Being thus personally committed, and so many other 

 respectable authors having long consigned works to futurity with 

 these distinctions, we think nothing can be more apparent, than 

 that the advance thus made should not on slight grounds have been 

 abandoned. Our author, however, has so abandoned it, and this is 

 the first of many innovations which he proposes. Thus, the Beluga 

 or white whale, which for some sixty years has been universally 

 ranked among the Delphinapteri, is no longer to be found in that 

 genus ; no more is it to be found among the dolphins, where it pre- 

 viously was, but, according to our author, it takes place among the 

 porpoises. 



The reasons which our author assigns for his innovations appear 

 to us anything but satisfactory. After enumerating three of the 

 sources whence generic characters have been drawn, first, the oldest 

 one, the dental system, so useful in classification throughout the 

 animal series ; secondly, the organs of movement, proposed by 

 Lacepede ; and thirdly, what we have named the facial line, in- 

 troduced by his brother, — " Mon frere y ajouta les formes de la 

 tete de l'animal vivant, et en fit l'application aux dauphins dans 

 la formation du groupe des marsouins," — he assigns, as the only 

 reason for setting these characters aside, that there are cases in 

 which they are of no great moment, or are equivocal, or uncertain. 

 In particular cases, and of the characters severally, this is true ; but 

 could M. F. Cuvier forget that this was probably as well known to 

 his brother as to himself ; and that still notwithstanding, these prin- 

 ciples of classification were in part introduced, and were all distinct- 

 ly stamped by the Baron's high authority. 



The mode in which our author treats the genus Delphinorhyncus 

 shows a contempt of authority, and a carelessness regarding classi- 

 fication and nomenclature, which astonished us not a little. He 

 does retain the term Delphinorhyncus, and includes several spe- 

 cies under it ; but it is not the Delphinorhyncus which Blainville in- 

 troduced, and which Desmarest, and Baron Cuvier, and M. F. Cu- 

 vier, and many others adopted ; but it is quite a different Delphi- 

 norhyncus, based on a different ground, — not on the form of the head 

 of the living animal, but on the form of the maxillary and inter- 

 maxillary bones of the dead, — a character, we may remark in pas- 

 sing, most obscure and objectionable. Regarding the established 

 basis of the genus, described in his own words as "une tete sans 



NO. T. M 



