THE SPERM WHALES, GIANT AND PYGMY. 
BY THEODORE GILL, M.D., PH.D. 
— Qa 
Vastness of size is so generally, and it may almost be 
conceded, so naturally associated in the popular idea with 
the whales, that some may scarcely be able to realize at 
first the fact that there are species no larger than ordinary 
porpoises; and yet which agree so closely in all the more 
essential elements of structure with some of the whales, 
that it is impossible, in a natural system, to separate them 
far from their gigantic relatives. We say some of the 
whales, for it is to be observed that the animals which are 
designated popularly as whales do not form a natural group, 
as contradistinguished from other animals. As popularly ap- 
plied, the word whale is a designation used in common for 
all the gigantie cetaceans, whether they be toothless and fur- 
nished with whalebone, as are the right-whales, or whether 
they be toothed, as are the sperm-whales, or cachalots.* 
The pygmies, to which we have alluded above, would not 
answer, then, to the popular conception. But, indeed, there 
are no characters which are coórdinated with size, and which 
would enable one to give a definition other than relative to 
size. We have to enter upon a more profound examination 
before being able to ascertain the relations of the various 
members of the cetacean order. It is only by taking into 
account the sum total of characters, internal as well as ex- 
ternal, that we are at length enabled to arrive at a correct 
appreciation of the true affinities of animals, and this induc- 
tive mode of study, applied to the cetaceans, teaches us that 
* It should be added, however, that **whale? seems to be used by some whalemen 
as a quasi-generic term for the cetaceans (see Cheever, ** The Whale and his Captors,” 
pp. 96, 97), and is al pplied by other p t f the 1 Delphinide, such as 
Beluga (the white whale), Orca (the killer whale), Globiocephalus (the caing whale), etc. 
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