98 SEALS AND U'lTALES OF THE BRITISH SEAS. 



as already said, a slender barrier stops the spread of species, and species 

 would certainly not spread to a spot where there was nothing for them to 

 feed upon. Again, animal life coidd not begin to feed upon animal life till 

 vegetable life had previously prepared the way, by providing food for the 

 animals which were to furnish food for others ; and vegetable life could not 

 begin to grow without a foundation of land, accessible either above or below 

 water. The total and constant absence ot all life at any particular spot 

 appears to me, therefore, to furn.ish a presumption that there has never been 

 dry land or shallow water there. Whether the continuance of deep water in 

 one spot for some interminably long time might not have the same effect is 

 another question, which, whatever wa)' it may be answered, vv'ould not affect 

 my explanation of the cause of the absence of the Sperm Whale from such 

 spots."* 



The woodcuts (figs. 17 and 18), representing the chair in Yarmouth 

 Church, which is formed of part of the skull of an individual of this species, 

 are from the ' Purlestrations of Great Yarmouth,' by Mr. C. J. Palmer. 



THE ZirniOID WHALES. 



The sub family Zipliiina:, which follows ne.xt, is, perhaps, the most re- 

 markable of the whole of this interesting order. The Zipliioid W^iales, as 

 they are designated, arc, for the most part, very rare, and until the com- 

 mencement of the present ccntur)', with one exception, were known to 

 science only from their numerous remains, found chiefly in the Crag deposits. 

 Even so recently as 1S71, Professor Flower, in a memoir of this groupf 

 speal;s of their occurrence at irregular intervals, and at various and most 



* 'Geographical Uislribulion of Mammalia,' pp. 211-ij. 

 f 'Transactions' of the Zoological Society, viii., p. 20J. 



