52 
HERDING OF THE 
met with remarkably cunning and full of courage, wbeu 
they will commit dreadful havoc with their jaws and 
tail ; the jaw and head however appear to be their prin- 
cipal offensive weapons. 
The female breeds at all seasons, producing but one 
at a time, except in a few instances, in which two are 
produced, as the case of the one stranded on the coast 
of D’Audierne fully proves : her time of gestation is 
unknown ; F. Cuvier supposes it to be about ten months. 
Their young, when first born, are, according to Mr. 
Bennett, about fourteen feet in length and six feet in 
girth— he also states that they lie in the uterus in the 
form of a bow. M. F. Cuvier states that those which 
were brought forth at D’Audierne were ten or eleven feet 
in length ; while Captain Colnett observes, that the 
young sperm whales, which he saw in great numbers off 
m 
the Galapago’s Islands, were not larger than a “ small 
porpoise. ^ Of these authorities I am inclined to depend 
most upon the accounts given by Mr. Bennett, because 
they coincide with instances which have come under my 
own observation. 
The female is much smaller than the male ; her size, 
when generally considered, being not more than one- 
fifth that of the adult “ large whale. The females 
* This fact has been much doubted by Sir William Jardine, on 
whales, in vol. iii. of the “ Naturalist’s Library,” p. 167, where, in 
using the information contained in the first edition of this work, 
he states, “ according to Beale she is much smaller than the male, 
in the proportion of nearly one to four or five. This appears a 
novel and, we presume to think, a somewhat doubtful assertion;” 
yet I can still assure Sir William that it is not far from the truth ! 
