4 * 
OF CETACEOUS FISHES. 
jaw ; the dolphin, with teeth in both jaws ; the porpeffe; 
and the grampus. Such are the marks by which the 
different tribes of this divifion are diftmguiihed from 
each other ; but the moft linking and obvious chara&er 
bv which they are at once difcriminated from all other 
animals, is their immenfe fize. The teftimony of all an- 
cient writers concurs in afcribing to them a bulk far fur- 
paffing the larged animal known upon the globe. In thofe 
books which Juba wrote to the fon of Augujlus Cafar 
concerning Arabia, whales of fix hundred feet long, and 
three broad, arc faid to have enteied a river of that coun- 
try *. Pliny himfelf vouches the extraordinary fize of 
two hundred and forty feet in length, by eighteen in 
breadth ; and Nearchus declares, that he faw on one of 
the.illands oppofite to the mouth of the Euphrates , a 
■whale of an hundred and fifty cubits, call out upon the 
fliore. Arrian +, Strabo J, and Diodorus , mention na- 
tions of favages bordering on the Indian Ocean, which 
built their houfes of the bones of whales call out by the 
fea, ufing their jaws for door cafes ; and we find from 
Trobijber, that the fame method of architeaure was for- 
merly praaifed by the inhabitants of Greenland i - 
Many later writers give a fimilar account of the mag- 
nitude of whales. Even within the araic circle, they 
were formerly of a prodigious fize, when their capture 
was lefs frequent, and the filh were allowed to grow. 
We know, by the accounts of travellers, that within the 
torrid zone, where they are unmolelted, they are Hill feen 
one hundred and fixty feet in length ||. Thofe at prefent 
taken in the Greenland leas, feldom exceed eighty oi nine- 
ty 
* Pliny, lib. xxxii. cap. I. f Liber viii. j Liber XV. 
§ Vide Second voyage, p. 1 8. || Adamian's voyages, p, 174. 
