REMARKS® 
9 
And that part of Cuvier’s history which states, 44 that 
the multitudes of fish which seek with avidity the dead 
carcasses of the other cetacea, d&re not approach the 
body of the cachalot, when he is floating lifeless on the 
surface of the ocean,” is just as incorrect as any of the 
foregoing; for sometimes whalers have experienced con- 
siderable losses in having had young sperm whales half 
eaten up in one night by large numbers of voracious 
sharks, as the whales have been lying secured by the 
ship’s side, ready for cutting in on the morrow. 
Great contradictions and dissensions have also at 
various times originated among naturalists, relative to 
the number of the species of this whale; yet notwith- 
standing the ingenious reasoning of some, and the bold 
and truthlike observations of others, with the close 
attention to the subject of such men as Green, Aldro- 
vandus, Willoughby, Rondelet, Artedi, Ray, Sibbald, 
Linnaeus, Brisson, Marten, and a crowd of other dis- 
tinguished naturalists, from the impossibility of any of 
these great men making continuous observations upon 
this interesting animal, the subject was still doomed to 
remain an apparently impenetrable mystery. 
And although Lacapede appears to be the first 
naturalist who endeavoured to introduce order into this 
department of zoology, yet even he has entirely failed 
in giving a correct account of this cetacean, when he 
states that there are eight species of this whale, some 
of which, he states, may be known by their dorsal 
> 
fins. 
To convince the reader of the utter confusion which 
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