OEDEE OF CETACEA. 65 



But thougli the regular whalers usually decline all encounter 

 with the Great Northern Eorqual, yet it is not so with the 

 natives of the polar regions, whose wants compel them to make 

 every exertion which promises the least success, and where cir- 

 cumstances are frequently peculiarly favourable. In Lapland the 

 animals sometimes yield fifteen tons of oil, and the worth of one 

 is about £150. 



[Two other species of Rorqual, of smaller dimensions, have been 

 cast ashore on the British coasts, the Physalus hoops, and the 

 P. Sihhaklii, and the Small Rorqual, Bahenoptera rostrata, more 

 commonly. This is the smallest, or, should we not rather say, the 

 least gigantic, of the group, and indeed of aU the true Whales, 

 rarely, if ever, exceeding twenty-four or, at most, thirty feet in 

 length. It is easily known by the white spot at the base of the 

 upper side of its flipper. Other Whales again, of the same Rorqual 

 series, are known to mariners as Hump-haclis ; such are the Mcgap- 

 tera loncjimana of the Greenland seas, the M. americana, stated to 

 be common at the Bermudas, and the M. poeskop of the Southern 

 Ocean ; which latter must again be different from the Bakenoptera 

 australis of Lesson, as this is described to have a long dorsal 

 fin, which, instead of being placed far backwards as usual, is 

 situate immediately over the flippers. This southern Rorqual but 

 rarely approaches the coasts of South Africa, at least it is stated 

 that only two or three are observed at the Cape in the course of 

 a year ; nor does any one think of pursuing it, since its great power 

 and velocity make it difficult and dangerous of capture, and the 

 products by no means rejjay the risk and labour incurred. 



The remains of great AVhales, referable to existing species or 

 genera, have been found in Britain and other countries, in gravel- 

 beds adjacent to estuaries or large rivers, in marine drift or shingle, 

 as the " elephant bed " near Brighton, and in clay-beds of 

 moderate geological antiquity ; the situations of these fossils 

 generalljr indicating a gain of dry land from the sea. Thus the 

 skeleton of one Rorqual, seventy-two feet in length, foimd em- 

 bedded in clay on the banks of the Forth, was more than twenty 

 feet above the rise of the highest tide. Several bones of a Whale, 

 discovered at Dumore Rock, Stirlingshire, were nearly forty 

 feet above the present level of the sea. Sir George Mackenzie 

 has recorded the discovery of a Whale vertebra in a bed of bluish 



F 



