REMARKS. 
11 
must be in error, if he classes the spermaceti whale 
with those which have dorsal fins, without going into 
reflections upon the other species, which he causes to 
depend on differences which do not exist ; because in the 
first place the sperm whale has no dorsal fin whatever, 
merely having in its place a hump, or rounded ridge of 
fat, in form not unlike that of a camel, and which is 
stripped off with the blubber, having in its structure no 
bones or cartilages, by which we might even suppose 
it to be the rudiment of a fin ; while several other kinds 
of whales possess real dorsal fins, as the finback, which 
belongs to the balaense, and is entirely different in its 
form and habits, having the head invested with the 
“ baleen, 5 ' or screening apparatus, by which it feeds, 
like the common black, or Greenland whale, on an 
entirely different food to that of the sperm whale, who 
has in place of the baleen, a jaw furnished with teeth, 
“ the two branches of which, are joined in the greater 
part of its length in a cylindrical symphysis,” and who 
spouts from the anterior angle of the head, while the 
finback, like the common whale of Greenland, spouts 
from the middle of the top of the same part. Others of 
the whale tribe have dorsal fins, while they possess the 
cylindrical jaw, as the black fish, but yet spout from 
the forehead, or top of the head, and do not produce 
spermaceti. While some, as the Greenland whale, spout 
from the middle of the top of the head, have their jaws 
furnished with baleen, but have neither dorsal fins nor 
hump. Another kind, which is well known to whalers, 
as the humpbacked whale, possesses, like the Greenland 
