318 MR. E, T. NEWTON ON THE CETACEA 



greater number of these spindles are aggregated in certain of the 

 laminae and, indeed, seem to be the cause of the greater opacity of 

 the darker bands. 



The examination of some very thin sections of a recent Cachalot's 

 tooth failed at first to reveal these spindle-shaped bodies ; but a 

 closer examination of more carefully prepared sections showed that 

 the spindles were present, although not so obvious as in the fossil, 

 and they seemed to contain but one or perhaps two rows of calci- 

 gerous cells. Probably the condition of fossilization has much to do 

 with the distinctness of these bodies, which I have detected in the 

 thick cement of some other forms of mammals. With the excep- 

 tion of this variation in the structure of the cement, I see no 

 difference worth mentioning between this " Porest-bed " fossil and 

 the tooth of a recent Sperm-Whale. The presence of globular 

 osteodentine in the basal portion of the Cachalot's tooth is no doubt 

 characteristic : but its absence from the " Forest-bed " specimen 

 does not militate against the latter belonging to the same species : 

 for it is obvious that there must have been a time with every tooth 

 when the osteodentine had not begun to be formed, and this fossil 

 is doubtless a young tooth in that condition. The absence of glob- 

 ular osteodentine from the Physeteroid teeth of the Hed Crag, which 

 have been called by Sir R. Owen Balcenodon pJiysaloides, cannot be 

 taken as evidence of their affinity with the " Forest -bed " specimen ; 

 for not only does it happen that osteodentine is sometimes present 

 in the Crag teeth, but the outward form of these fossils is different, 

 being more slender and cylindrical, and having always a propor- 

 tionately smaller core of dentine and a larger development of cement, 

 notwithstanding that there is much variation in the latter particular. 



With the exception of the Cachalot's tooth noticed by Sir R. 

 Owen (Brit. Foss. Mamm. p. 524), as from "the superficial deposits 

 near the coast of Essex," which is of doubtful age*, I am not 

 aware that the Sperm-Whale has ever been noticed as a fossil in 

 this country. M. Gervais records several Physeter teeth from the 

 Pliocene of Montpellier and of Gironde (Gervais and Van Beneden, 

 ' Osteographie des Cetaces,' 1880, p. 329, and Zool. et Pal. Fr. p. 285), 

 but these, being of a different form, have been doubtfully referred 

 to another species, Physeter antiquus. 



At the present day the Sperm-Whale inhabits the tropical and 

 warmer temperate latitudes, but wanders occasionally both north- 

 wards and southwards. JN"umerous instances are on record of its 

 having been found on our own coasts ; the last, according to Bell 

 (Brit. Quadrupeds, 1874, p. 418), was stranded in Loch Scavaig, 

 I. of Skye, in 1871. The species is not altogether unknown on the 



* There can be Uttle doubt that the figure of this tooth given in the ' British 

 Fossil Mammals ' at page 524 was drawn from the specimen in the Hunterian 

 Museum, Eoy. Coll. Surgeons, no. 2887, which in the catalogue is said to have 

 been presented by Mr. Darwin, and to be from S. America. This could not 

 have been the tooth to which Mr. Charlesworth referred in 1884 (Quart. Journ. 

 Geol. Soc. vol. i. p. 40, 1845), which was doubtless one of the Eed-Crag 

 Balcenodon teeth. 



