ORDEE OP CETACEA. 63 



ticular species appears to have been quite overlooked by modern 

 naturalists until the j^ear 1859, when some account of it appeared 

 in the Journal of the Amitic Society of Bengal. It is, nevertheless, 

 so far from being rare, indeed the sight of a shoal of these huge 

 animals is so familiar a spectacle to mariners in the Indian Ocean, 

 that to this very circumstance, combined with the fact of their not 

 being of much commercial value, may be attributed the extraor- 

 dinary absence of such memorial. Had the appearance of a shoal 

 {schule or school in nautical language) of enormous Whales in the 

 Arabian Sea or Persian Gulf been a phenomenon of unusual 

 occurrence, it would unquestionably have been recorded from time to 

 tune. The great Indian Rorqual is, indeed, very common still in the 

 seas where it was observed by Nearchus and his companions, off the 

 coasts of Arabia and of Mekran, Sindh, the peninsula of Cutch, and 

 again further southward, off the Malabar coast. One cast up dead 

 upon Amherst Islet, near Ramri Island, on the Arakan coast, in 

 the Bay of Bengal, during the rainy season of 1851, measured 

 84 feet in length, of which the rami of the lower jaw were 21 feet, 

 or exactly one quarter of the total length. Another, stated to be 

 90 feet long, and about 42 feet in circumference, was cast upon the 

 Chittagong coast in 1842 (in about lat. 21"^ N".). It appears that 

 early on the 15th August, the attention of the inhabitants of that 

 coast were attracted by something in appearance like, the capsized 

 huU of a large vessel, floating on the surface of the sea, and 

 coming towards the mouth of the Musical River. When it approached 

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

 continually spouting up water iato the air, and by the middle of the 

 day it cast itself on the shore of Muskal Island. Bj' 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 Elephant. 

 An excellent observer remarks that " these Rorquals are very 

 common on the Malabar coast. American ships, and occasionally 

 a Swedish one, call at Cochin for stores during their cruises for them ; 

 but no English whalers ever come here. One, said to be 100 feet 

 long, was strandfed on the coast. I saw seven of its vertebra3 and 

 ribs. Another, 90 feet long, got among the reefs of Quilon, and 

 was murdered by some hundreds of natives, with guns, spears, 

 axes, &c., and was cut up and eaten (salted and dried as weU as 



