OF THE SPERM WHALE. 
115 
begins by a small hole scarcely perceptible, situated on 
the side of the head a little behind the eye ; it is much 
longer than in other animals, in consequence of the size 
of the head being so much increased beyond the cavity 
which contains the brain. The Eustachian tube opens on 
the outside of the upper part of the fauces. The bony 
part of the organ is very hard and brittle, rendering it 
difficult to be cut with a saw without its chipping into 
pieces, and there is on the whole more solid bone than 
in the corresponding parts in quadrupeds, it being thick 
and massy.” 
“ I am not aware, however, that any other beside the 
sperm whale has any external auricular opening. For 
in the beluga, examined by Dr. Barclay (according to 
the Naturalist's Library, vol. vi. p. 71), no external 
opening could be discovered, nor was any discovered by 
Blainville in the toothless whale of Havre, nor in any of 
the seventy globiceps which were stranded in Brittany 
in 1812, nor in a rorqual , fifty-eight feet long, examined 
by M. Souty; and the same may be said of a narwhal 
and dolphin we have had an opportunity of examining.” 
Dr. Alderson has remarked of the sperm whale, that 
“ there was no external ear, but simply a small circu- 
lar opening, about nine inches, posteriorly to the poste- 
rior canthus of the eye, which just admitted the finger.” 
— Camb, Philos . Trans . 
OF THE EYE. 
“ The eye in this tribe of animals is constructed upon 
nearly the same principle as that of quadrupeds, differing 
