1860.] Proceedings of the Asiatic Society. 453 



resort of the species. As a general rule, however, the Sperm Whale 

 keeps to the open ocean, and is rarely observed in what seamen term 

 ' narro w seas,' as the Bay of Bengal or Sea of Arabia even. My 

 informant, who has been long engaged in the so-called ' fishery' for 

 Sperm Whales, may be trusted as a safe authority for the species 

 or genus. 



Lastly, with reference to the remark of Nearchus (XXVIII, 481,) 

 that the bones of Whales were, in his time, made use of for building 

 purposes on the coast of Mekran, I may notiee that they have also 

 been thus used on the shores of the Polar Sea, at the N. E. extremity 

 of Siberia. Thus Von Wrangell remarks that — " At many places 

 along this coast we saw the bones of Whales stuck upright in the 

 ground ; our interpreter, and subsequently the Tschuktschi whom we 

 met, said that they were the remains of the former dwellings of a 

 stationary tribe. They appeared to have been of a better and more 

 solid kind than are now used, and to have been partly sunk in the 

 ground." And again — " There are traditions which relate that two 

 centuries ago the Onkilon occupied the whole of the coast from Cape 

 Schelagskoi to Behring's Straits ; and it is true that there are every- 

 where along this tract the remains of huts constructed of earth and 

 whale bones, and quite different from the present dwellings of the 

 Tschuktschi." Von Wrangell's Narrative of an Expedition to tlie 

 Polar Sea (Salines translation, 1840, pp. 360, 372.) E. Bltth * 



* Beferring to the recent use of flint itnplements, in p. 384 antea, I have 

 since read the following passage concerning the American red man, quoted in the 

 London Athenceum for Sept. 15th, 1860, No. 1716, p. 346. " They dig their 

 ground with a flint, called in their language tom- a-pea-kan, and so put five or six 

 grains into a holethe latter end. of April or beginning of May," &c. &c. Quoted 

 from a reprint of a Two years' Journal in New York, and part of its Territories 

 in América, by Charles Wqoley, or Wolley, A. M. (about A. D. 1678). Of course 

 a research into the narratives of the oíd navigators will disinter many instances 

 of the kind, by those who have the leisure for it, among nation3 unacquainted 

 with the use of metáis. 



Two stupid errata have crept into my memoir on Indian Cetácea. One (p. 486 

 antea) is in the extract from the Friend of India newspaper. For " diameter" 

 read circumference ! The other relates to thelongitude of the Sulu or Mindoro 

 Sea (p. 484), which rectify as being from 118 g to 122o meridians E. of Grreen- 

 wich. 



