176 M. F. Cuvier Be VHistoire 



which this circumstance does not so readily explain, which may he 

 characterized under the name of innovation, and which assuredly 

 should not have been employed to the extent it has been, without 

 some very urgent and pressing necessity. In many particulars, in- 

 deed, M. Cuvier manifests a becoming respect towards the decisions 

 of his illustrious brother, but in not a few instances he treats his 

 opinions with as little ceremony as he does those of others, and re- 

 jects his proposals, and substitutes other views, which of course he 

 regards as preferable. Thus, whilst he follows the new and admi- 

 rable arrangement of the Baron with regard to the herbivorous Ce- 

 tacea, and to the great whales, he very much forsakes and opposes 

 him, and so innovates, in reference to that very numerous group 

 which is intermediate between these two extremes. There can be 

 little doubt that this is now the most perplexed and difficult 

 part of the subject, and in illustration of the statement just made, 

 and still more, as bearing very essentially on the future progress of 

 the science, we judge it right to dwell somewhat more at large on 

 the point. 



Most of our readers are probably aware that some progress has 

 been made in classifying these unnumbered, not to say innumerable 

 species of smaller Cetacea. In the time of Bonnaterre, not fifty years 

 ago, the genus Delphinus contained only nine species, but since that 

 period this number has so much augmented, and is still so rapidly 

 increasing, that it has long been felt necessary to break it up and 

 subdivide it. It was the illustrious Lacepede who led the way in 

 this division by the introduction of his Delphinapterus, including 

 those which had no dorsal fin. Rafinesque Smaltz followed, by his 

 discovering a species with two dorsal fins, which he named oxypte- 

 rus. Baron Cuvier introduced a distinction founded upon what we 

 may call the facial line of the living animal, thus separating the 

 Fhoccena, whose head and snout are uniformly curved to the ex- 

 tremity, from the Delphinus, which has a distinct fall or groove be- 

 tween the forehead and beak. Pursuing the same idea, Blainville 

 introduced the Delphinorhyncus, which has a beak, which separates 

 it from the phocense, and yet the beak not distinguished from the 

 forehead, as in the dolphins, but on a uniform slope from the top 

 of the head to the extreme point ; and finally, Lesson has proposed 

 to constitute the Globiceps, whose heads are almost wholly rounded 

 like a globe, into a genus. Now these proposals have all, more or 

 less, been adopted, and most of them, as the Delphinapterus, Del- 

 phinus, Delphinorhyncus, Phoceena, universally by later writers, 

 such as Desmarest, Cuvier, Scoresby, Blainville, Lesson, &c. An- 



