ORDER OF CETACEA. 
65 
But though, the regular whalers usually decline all encounter 
with the Great Northern Borqual, yet it is not so with the 
natives of the polar regions, whose wants compel them to make 
every exertion which promises the least success, and where cir- 
cumstances are frequently peculiarly favourable. In Lapland the 
animals sometimes yield fifteen tons of oil, and the worth of one 
is about £150. 
[Two other species of Borqual, of smaller dimensions, have been 
cast ashore on the British coasts, the Physalus hoops, and the 
P. Sibhaldii, and the Small Borqual, Balcenoptera rostrata, more 
commonly. This is the smallest, or, should we not rather say, the 
least gigantic, of the group, and indeed of all the true Whales, 
rarely, if ever, exceeding twenty- four or, at most, thirty feet in 
length. It is easily known by the white spot at the base of the 
upper side of its flipper. Other Whales again, of the same Borqual 
series, are known to mariners as Hump-hacks ; such are the Megap- 
tera longimana of the Greenland seas, the M. americana, stated to 
he common at the Bermudas, and the H. poeskop of the Southern 
Ocean ; which latter must again be different from the Balcenoptera 
australis of Lesson, as this is described to have a long dorsal 
fin, which, instead of being placed far backwards as usual, is 
situate immediately over the flippers. This southern Borqual but 
rarely approaches the coasts of South Africa, at least it is stated 
that only two or three are observed at the Cape in the course of 
a year ; nor does any one think of pursuing it, since its great power 
and velocity make it difficult and dangerous of capture, and the 
products by no means repay the risk and labour incurred. 
The remains of great Whales, referable to existing species or 
genera, have been found in Britain and other countries, in gravel- 
beds adjacent to estuaries or large rivers, in marine drift or shingle, 
as the “ elephant bed ” near Brighton, and in clay-beds of 
moderate geological antiquity ; the situations of these fossils 
generally indicating a gain of dry land from the sea. Thus the 
skeleton of one Borqual, seventy-two feet in length, found em- 
bedded in clay on the banks of the Forth, was more than twenty 
feet above the rise of the highest tide. Several bones of a Whale, 
discovered at Dumore Bock, Stirlingshire, were nearly forty 
feet above the present level of the sea. Sir George Mackenzie 
has recorded the discovery of a Whale vertebra in a bed of bluish 
F 
