Chap. 3.] 
LAKGEST ANIMALS IN THE OCEAN. 
361 
bis/^ are in the habit of making the doors of their houses with 
the jaw-bones of fishes, and raftering the roofs with their bones, 
many of which were found as much as forty cubits in length. 
At this place, too, the sea-monsters, just like so many cattle,^'' 
were in the habit of coming on shore, and, after feeding on the 
roots of shrubs, they would return ; some of them, which had 
the heads of horses,^® asses, and bulls, found a pasture in the 
crops of grain. 
CHAP. 3. (4.) THE LAEGEST ANIMALS THAT AEE FOUND IN EACH 
OCEAN. 
The largest animals found in the Indian Sea are the pistrix 
and the balsena ; while of the Gallic Ocean the physeter^^ is 
champs suggests that the Gedrosi mentioned this in relation to the 
Ichthyophagi, who were probably their neighbours. 
1^ Also called the Cophetes. See B. vi. c. 25. The commander of 
Alexander's fleet more especially alluded to, is probably Nearchus, who 
wrote an account of his voyage, to which Pliny has previously made allu- 
sion in B. vi. and which is followed by Strabo, in B. xv., and by Arrian, in 
his Indica." 
16 Hardouin remarks, that the Basques of his day were in the habit of 
fencing their gardens with the ribs of the whale, which sometimes ex- 
ceeded twenty feet in length ; and Cuvier says, that at the present time, the 
jaw-bone of the whale is used in Norway for the purpose of making beams 
or posts for buildings. 
Onesicritus, quoted by Strabo, B. xv., says., that in the vicinity of 
Taprobane, or Ceylon, there were animals which had an amphibious life, 
some of which resembled oxen, some horses, and various other land animals. 
Cuvier is of opinion, that not improbably the " Trichecum manatum" and 
the " Trichecum dagong" of Linnaeus are alluded to, which are herbivorous 
animals, though nearly allied to the cetacea, and which are in the habit of 
coming to pasture on the grass or sea- weed they may chance to find on the 
shore. 
1^ It is remarked by Cuvier, that there is no resemblance whatever be- 
tween the domesticated animals and any of the cetacea ; but that the 
imagination of the vulgar has pictured to itself these supposed resem- 
blances, by the aid of a lively imagination. 
19 From the Greek (pvaif]rr}pj "a blower," probably one of the whale 
species, so called from its blowing forth the water. Hardouin remarks, that 
Pliny mentions the Gallic Ocean, in B.vi. c. 33, as ending at the Pyrenees; 
and, probably, by this term he means the modern Bay of Biscay. Ronde- 
letius, B. xvi. c. 14, says, that this fish is the same that is called by the 
Narbonnese peio mular, by the Italians capidolio, and by the people of 
Saintonge, " sedenette." Cuvier conjectures also, that this was some kind 
of large whale ; a fish which was not unfrequently found, in former times, 
in the gulf of Aquitaine, the inhabitants of the shores of which were skilled 
in its pursuit. Ajasson states that Yalmont de Bomare was of opinion 
