148 FOSSIL MAMMALIA. 



English, huval in Swedish and Danish, qual m Norwegian, 

 and hwalune in Islandic, is applied to all cetacea without dis- 

 crimination. In French, too, this word, which probably has 

 some relation with (pcxXonMa, and bal(E7ia, has constantly been 

 translated baleine^ even when it simply signified the dolphin, 

 and has led naturalists, who did not understand the full extent 

 of its acceptation, into the most serious errors'^. 



We may, however, in summing up this account of the fossil 

 cetacea, speak with tolerable certainty of the following remains. 



There is, as we have seen, a collection of vertebrae in the 

 Paris Museum, from the basin of Anvers, which approach the 

 form of the corresponding vertebrae in the dolphins, but the 

 body of which is more elongated in proportion to their dia- 

 meter, and which appear to have belonged to two or three 

 species of different sizes, the largest of which may have been 

 double the size of the grampus. There are also among them 

 some flatted ones, almost similar to those of the dugongs and 

 lamantins. 



From the environs of Havre, and some other places, there 

 are more of these bones in the same collection, the locale of 

 which has not been well described, and which do not appear, 

 in what remains of them, to differ from the existing balaenae 

 and cachalots : but the apophyses are too much fractured to 

 furnish characters that can be distinctly appreciated. 



The same may be said of a certain number of entire or 

 mutilated ribs, which were found in various situations. One, 

 for example, from the valley of I'Authie, near Montreuil-sur- 



♦ The word wall, imported by the Normans, was used on the French 

 coasts in the middle ages. In several charters of the eleventh century, 

 when mention is made of an association of whalers, they are designated 

 societas, or communio walmannorum. The cetacea are also called in 

 these charters, cr«5sws piscis, grassus pesius, and generhUy piscis ad 

 lardum. It would appear that those animals were estimated more highly 

 in those days than at present. The flesh was a common article of food, 

 and sent in great quantities to Paris. From crassua piscis comes the 

 French graspois, and the English grampus. Graspois, for a long time, 

 signified the fat of the cetacea generally. 



