6778 



Cetacea. 



the Indus to the Persian Gulf, B.C. 327. Not only did the ancient navigator encounter 

 a troop of these huge animals, but it would appear that they were at that time not 

 unfrequently stranded on the coast of Mekran, where the Icthyophagi of that treeless 

 country used their bones for building purposes. From that distant period until 

 quite recently Mr. Blyth had been unable to discover a single record of the occurrence 

 of great whales iu the Indian Seas north of the equator; but they were, nevertheless, 

 so far from being rare, indeed the sight of a shoal of these huge animals was so familiar 

 a spectacle to mariners, that to this very circumstance — combined with the fact of their 

 being of no commercial value— might be attributed the extraordinary absence of such 

 memorial. Had the appearance of a shoal (or "school," in nautical language) of 

 enormous whales in the Arabian Sea or Bay of Bengal been a phenomenon of unusual 

 occurrence, it would unquestionably have been recorded from time to time. From 

 reliable information obtained, Mr. Blyth was enabled to slate, with confidence, that 

 these huge animals are still occasionally observed within the Persian Gulf, — rarely, 

 however, in shoals, but generally one or two stragglers at a time ; that just now a par- 

 ticular individual " cruising" about the neighbourhood of Muskat, has been familiarly 

 known to persons visiting that port for some years past. It might therefore be con- 

 cluded that to this time a shoal of them may now and then be seen off the coast of 

 Mekran, at the head of the Arabian Sea a little further to the east, where Nearchus 

 and his fleet encountered them ; and that a carcass may still occasionally be stranded 

 on the same rarely-visited coast, and the bones even yet be applied to like purposes 

 by the scanty fish-eating population of that inhospitable region. An interesting account 

 was cited, from the ' Friend of India' of the time, of a whale (described to have been 

 ninety feet in length and forty-two feet in diameter) which was stranded alive on the 

 west side of Maskal Island, on the Chittagong coast (in about lat. 21° north), on the 

 15th of August, 1842. Another, stated to have been eighty-four feet long, was thrown 

 up dead upon Juggoo or Amherst Islet, south of Ramri and east of Cheduba, on the 

 Arakan coast (about 2° further south), during the rainy season of 1851. A few of the 

 bones of this individual were collected in the following year by the present Major 

 T. P. Sparkes, then Assistant-Commissioner of Ramri, and were presented by him for 

 the Asiatic Society's Museum, where they are now exhibited : they consist of the two 

 rami of the lower jaw, which are within less than two inches of twenty-one feet in 

 length, a rib, the left radius, and five vertebrae. The proportional length of the radius 

 bone sufficed to show that the animal was a rorqual, " Finner " or " Finback" of sea- 

 men (Balcenoptera of zoologists), as distinguished from a " Hunchback" (Megaptera), 

 and still more from a finless or u right whale" {Balcena) ; but in the remarkable slen- 

 derness of the lower jaw it differed much from all previously known rorquals, for which 

 reason the name Balaenoptera indica was proposed to distinguish the particular species. 

 Further reasons and arguments were adduced to prove that the great whale of the 

 Indian Seas was a true rorqual, as distinguished from other generic forms of 

 Balamidae ; and Mr. Blyth was of opinion that no other species of large whale existed 

 in the Indian Ocean north of the equator. From the concurrent testimony of many 

 trustworthy observers, he remarked that it possessed a high and conspicuous dorsal 

 fin, which again is a marked characteristic from which the name " Balaenoptera " is 

 derived. He stated that it was not unfrequently observed in and about the Bay of 

 Bengal, often in numerous herds ; yet the only additional notice he had met with of 

 these huge creatures consists of a statement in the Rev. J. Mason's work on the 

 • Natural History of the Tenasserim Provinces,' that, " The whale is found south of 

 Mcrgui, and Capt. Lloyd named a bay a few miles south of the parallel of 12° north, 



