CACHALOT. 
87 
Among other characters, the Toothed Whales have no whale- 
bone, but always possess teeth, which are generally numerous, 
although sometimes few and rudimentary. The upper portion 
of the skull is more or less unsymmetrical, and there is no 
organ of smell. The two halves of the lower jaw come in 
contact in front by a flat surface of variable length, constituting 
a true symphysis. Several pairs of ribs are connected with 
the elongated breast-bone, or sternum, by means of cartilages, 
which are often ossified. The blow-hole is single, the two 
nostrils uniting before they reach the surface, usually in the 
form of a transverse crescent-shaped aperture on the top of 
the head. 
The members of the family Pliyseteridce are distinguished by 
several common characters of the skull and vertebral column, 
by never having functional teeth in the upper jaw, and by 
their rib-cartilages never becoming ossified. 
The largest member of this family is the Sperm-Whale or 
Cachalot {Phjseter macrocephalus)^ of which a model (fig. 49) 
has been constructed on the skeleton of a specimen cast ashore 
on the coast of Caithness, near Thurso, in June 1863. It is 
54 feet long (measured in a straight line) — this being about 
the average length of a full-grown specimen of this animal, 
notwithstanding statements as to a length of 80 or 100 feet 
being attained. Cachalots feed chiefly on cuttlefishes, and are 
some of the most extensively distributed of Cetaceans, being- 
met with, usually in herds or “ schools,^' in almost all tropical 
or subtropical seas, and occurring occasionally even so far north 
as Shetland. The oil contained in the great cavity of the skull 
yields “ spermaceti,^^ used in the manufacture of candles and 
of ointments, and the thick covering of blubber enveloping the 
body produces sperm-oil. Hence this species has long been 
the subject of a regular chase, by which its numbers have been 
greatly diminished. The substance called “ ambergris,^^ largely 
used in perfumery, is a concretion formed in the intestines of 
the Sperm-Whale, but generally found floating on the surface 
of the seas which it inhabits ; its genuineness is attested by 
the presence of fragments of the horny beaks of the cephalopods 
