18 
INTRODUCTORY 
other recent writers on these subjects : Mr. T. Bell, in his 
valuable and beautiful work on British quadrupeds and 
marine mammalia, favours the opinions of the others 
who have preceded him. This misconception is also 
disseminated in the volume upon cetacea in the Natu- 
ralist’s Library, conducted by Sir William Jardine, who 
has also fallen into great errors with regard to the sperm 
whale’s feeding, and the size of the female. And al- 
though that gentleman has thought proper to fill his 
chapter on the natural history of the sperm whale en- 
tirely from the first little edition of this work, he does 
not appear to be convinced of its veracity, and at the 
same time (I am compelled to observe) to display a con- 
siderable want of accurate information on the subject, 
when he supposes that the food of the sperm whale 
is similar to that of the Greenland whale ; a sup- 
position manifestly untenable, when we regard the 
very different apparatus for the prehension and reten- 
tion of food in the mouths of the two animals. The 
one provided with a complex and wonderfully ar- 
ranged screen or sieve, for the purpose of separating 
minute animals from the water that passes through its 
mouth ; and the other furnished with short but pointed 
teeth, evidently intended for the seizure of larger ob- 
jects, and totally unfitted for the function performed by 
the former. 
Moreover, the fact of the loligo affording the princi- 
pal food of the sperm whale, is a well and long known 
fact, and an instance of this creature being found in the 
stomach of a sperm whale stranded on the coast of Nor- 
