OKDEK OF CETACEA. 
75 
college of fifteen priests who performed service at Rome in tlie 
temple of Apollo ; caressed by Neptune, it was tbe sign of a calm 
sea and tbe safety of sailors ; arranged round an anchor, or placed 
above an Ox with a human face, it indicated that mixture of quick- 
ness and slowness which is expressed by prudence.” 
The figure of the Dolphin is seen on the ancient medals of 
Tarentum and those of Paestum ; on the medals of Corinth, which 
give to its head its true features ; on those of AEgium, in Achaia, 
of Euboea, of Byzantium, Brindisi, Larinum, Lipari, Syracuse, 
Thera, and Yelia, as also on those of the emperors Nero, Vitellius, 
Yespasian, Titus, &c. 
As the common Dolphin is very frequently met with at the 
present day in the Mediterranean and the ocean, it is very pro- 
bable that it is to this species that all the sayings of the ancients 
refer. AY e must, however, mention that certain naturalists — having 
found that the descriptions left by the Greeks correspond only 
imperfectly with the common Dolphin, that the representations are 
often unlike, and generally inexact — have thought that they 
ought to come to the conclusion that the marvellous animal so 
much spoken of by the ancients was a creation of the fancy. But 
this opinion cannot be admitted, after the explanation given by 
Lacepede, and from which it results that the want of accuracy in 
the representations of the Dolphin arose from the respect which 
the painters and sculptors of Greece showed to the traditional 
image of the Dolphin which was handed down to them from their 
most ancient artists, the contemporaries of Homer. 
The different species of Dolphins are extremely numerous. 
Porpoise . — Porpoises differ from Dolphins in having the muzzle 
short, uniformly rounded, and not having the form of a beak. The 
common Porpoise (Fig. 21) is one of the smallest of the Cetaceans : 
it is only one metre twenty-five centimetres in length. It lives 
in numerous troops, and attracts attention by its merry gam- 
bols amongst the waves. The Mackerel, the Herring, and the 
Salmon flee before these turbulent troops of Porpoises. These 
troops are sometimes so numerous that, at the moment when the 
individual creatures composing them come to the surface to breathe, 
they darken the surface of the ocean. One then sees their oily 
blackish bodies shining on all sides. 
Porpoises make desperate war on the fish we have just mentioned, 
