TRUMBULL CONCERNING DUBEETUS. 29 



In answer to a letter of inquiry from Professor Baird, Professor Trumlbull wrote as follows: 



Haetfoed, February 1, 1880. 



Deae Peofessoe Baied : Tour query of January 29 just now comes to hand. Isn't that 

 troublesome Diihertus rhodinsulensis satisfactorily disposed of yet ? More than twenty-one years 

 ago (in November, 1858) the Rev. S. C. Newman, of Pawtucket, questioned Professor Agassiz on 

 the subject. His reply was, that having looked in the only work in which he supposed the desired 

 information was likely to be found — Nemnich's Polly glotten Lexicon — he could only say that it did 

 not even contain the name " Dubertus." The correspondence, so far unsatisfactory, was printed in 

 the " Providence Journal," December 9. The next day the Hon. Albert G-. Greene wrote to the 

 ''Journal" that "before and at the time of the granting of the charter of Rhode Island, ' Dubertus' 

 was the word used to distinguish the sperm whale from the common or right whale," and referred 

 for his authority to the description given by Sir Thomas Browne " of the spermaceti whale," 

 which "mariners (who are not the best nomenclators) called a Juhartas, or rather Giblartas." Mr. 

 Greene came very near being right, and undoubtedly was right in identifying the "Dubertus" of 

 the charter with the " Jubartas" or "Gibbartas" of the old whale fishermen; but he was wrong on 

 the main point that either "Jubartas" or "Dubertus" was a distinctive name of the sperm whale, 

 except by a "vulgar error" of the Norfolk mariners, who, as Sir Thomas Browne understood, "are 

 not the best nomenclators." The "Jubartas," "Gibbartas," or "Gubartas" — as the name which, by 

 an error of the engrossing clerk, appears as "Dubertus" in the Rhode Island charter, was 

 variously written by naturalists in the seventeenth century — was aFinhacIc, the ^' Balcena Wovce 

 Anglice-," as Klein calls it, the '■'■ Jupitervisoh" of the Dutch whalers, Balwnoptera Juhartes of 

 Lac^pfede. (The last name I heard for it was, I think, Sibbaldius tuberosus ; but this was a year 

 or two ago, and it may have been rechristened a dozen times since then.) The name, however, has 

 been applied to more than one species of Finback, for naturalists, when dealing with cetacea, were 

 not, in the last century, much better "nomenclators" than the English mariners; but it has always 

 been restricted to the BalcenoptericlcB, and has never designated any species of either sperm or 

 right whales. 



The history of the name is curious. Rondelet (" De Piscibus" lib. xvi, p. 482) gives a figure of 

 a "Balaena Vera" (drawn from life, he says) which "the whale fishers of Saintonge call Gibbar, a 

 Gibbero Dorso, that is, raised in a hump, on which is the fin." From this provincial name came 

 Gibbartas, Gubartas, Jubart, Jubartes, Jupiter, and half a dozen other corruptions, introduced first 

 among mariners, and afterwards adopted or recognized as synonyms by naturalists, and distributed 

 among three or four different species. 



Lac6p6de, under Balcenoptera Jubartes, includes Balcena boops (Gmelin), and "probably the 

 sulphur-bottom of the west coast of North America," the Jubartes of Klein, and the Jupiter Fisch, 

 described by Anderson, as well as Baleine Jubarte of Bonnaterre (Encyc. M6th.). 



Klein ("Misc. Pise," 11, 13) says that the whale catchers have corrupted the name of the Jupiter, 

 or Piscis Jovis, to Jubartes, which is reversing the actual process of corruption. He calls this the 

 "Whale of New England." 



Anderson, cited by Lac^pfede, in "Nachrichten von Island, Gronland, etc.," p. 220, describes " the 

 Jupiter or Jupiterfisch " as a kind of fin-fish, saying that its name, without doubt, comes from that 

 of Gubartes or Gibbartas, which has been given it by others, and which is itself a corruption of 

 the Biscayan Gibbar, 



But Lac^p&de makes "Balcena nodosa," "Humpback Whale of the English," and Balcena 

 gibbosa," the Whales of New England, and refers to Bonnaterre, who separates le Gibbar, Engl. 

 Finflsh, from la Jubarte B. boops. Between Gibbar and Gibbosa, Jupiter and Gubartus, the things 

 get rather mixed. 



