Cetacea

“ The more modern exaggerations in the dimensions of the bigger Whales are probably due to the fact that measurements have been taken, not in a straight line from snout to tail, but along the bulging sides of the Cetacean, rendered even more convex than in nature by decomposition, and by pressure due to the immense tonnage of the creature.
The Cetacea are the most perfectly aquatic of all mammals; they never leave the waters which they inhabit. ”

“ The whole of the internal structure in the herbivorous cetacea differs as widely from that of the carnivorous cetacea as do their habits; the amount of variation is as great as well could be in animals of the same class existing in the same great deep. ”

“ Any supposed signs of inferiority are simply modifications in adaptation to their peculiar mode of life. In the present state of our knowledge, the Cetacea are absolutely isolated, and little satisfactory reason has ever been given for deriving them from any one of the existing divisions of the class more than from any other. The question has indeed often been mooted whether they have been derived from land mammals at all, or whether they may not be the survivors of a primitive aquatic form which was the ancestor not only of the whales, but of all the other members of the class. ”

“ In the organs of the senses the Cetacea exhibit some remarkable adaptive modifications of structures essentially formed on the mammalian type, and not on that characteristic of the truly aquatic vertebrates, the fishes. ”

“ The Cetacea, or Whale Family, including whales, Porpoises, dolphins, etc., which are quite fish-like in appearance and structure, their forms being adapted for life in the sea, although they are, of course, Mammals, bringing forth matured young which are suckled at the breast ”

“ Time and circumstances have not permitted the acquisition of anything analogous to the special aquatic smelling apparatus of fishes, the result being that whales are practically deprived of whatever advantage this sense may be to other animals.
All the Cetacea present some traces of teeth, which in structure and mode of development resemble those of mammals, and not those of the lower vertebrated classes, but they are always found in a more or less imperfect state. ”

“ Indeed a stranded Whale cannot live long, for it is unable to breathe, the comparatively feeble breast being crushed by its own weight. In accordance with the purely aquatic habit, we find a modification of the outward form of the body (and as we shall see later of many of the internal organs) , which renders the Cetacea externally unlike all other mammals. The form is fish-like, the fore-limbs are paddles, the tail is expanded into two horizontal flukes, which serve to propel the creature through the water. ”

“ They are all predaceous, subsisting on living animal food of some kind. One genus alone (Orca) eats other warm-blooded animals, as seals and even members of its own order, both large and small. Some feed on fish, others on small floating Crustacea, pteropods, and medusa?, while the staple food of many is constituted of the various species of Cephalopods. With some exceptions the Cetacea generally are timid, inoffensive animals, active in their movements, sociable and gregarious in their habits. ”

“ The Cetacea are connected with the marine Carnivores through the genus Zeuglodon, as Huxley has shown, and the points of resemblance are so marked that the affinity cannot be doubted. That the connection was a direct one, however, is hardly probable, since the diminutive brain, large number of simple teeth, and reduced limbs in the whales, all indicate them to be an old type, which doubtless branched off from the more primitive stock leading to the Carnivores. Our American extinct Cetaceans, when carefully investigated, promise to throw much light upon the pedigree of these strange mammals. ”

“ Impenetrable veil covering our knowledge of the cetacea. “A field strewn with thorns.” “All these incomplete indications but serve to torture us naturalists.”
Thus speak of the whale, the great Cuvier, and John Hunter, and Lesson, those lights of zoology and anatomy. Nevertheless, though of real knowledge there be little, yet of books there are a plenty; and so in some small degree, with cetology, or the science of whales. Many are the men, small and great, old and new, landsmen and seamen, who have at large or in little, written of the whale. ”

“ CETACEA—WHALES AND DOLPHINS
Order VI. CETACEA. [1]
Aquatic Mammalia of fish-like form; tail expanded into horizontal flukes; a fatty dorsal "fin" present in most species; anterior limbs converted into fin-like paddles; posterior limbs only represented by skeletal rudiments. Hairy covering reduced to a few isolated hairs in the neighbourhood of the muzzle. Nostrils represented by the single or double blow-hole, nearly always situated far back upon the skull. Bones of loose texture and much impregnated with oil. The skull has a greatly-developed facial portion ”

“ Again, the forms of cetacea exemplify the analogy there is between whales and fishes. They are related to mammalia; they are analogous [N19] to fishes; they bear close affinity to the mammals which nurse their young with milk; they have rather close analogy to the gill-breathing fishes.
Since the fossil animals which have existed during former periods upon the surface of our globe, and which have successively peopled the ocean and the dry land, have been more carefully studied than they were at the beginning of these investigations ”

“ Of these the first in eminence and of importance to our commerce, is the Balæna mysticetus, the common or Greenland whale. This animal is productive of more oil than any other [Pg 140] of the cetacea, and being less active, slower in its motion, and more timid than any other of its kind, of similar, or nearly similar, magnitude, it is more easily captured. Its size has been much overrated, and, in his excellent natural history of cetaceous animals, La Cepède has been guilty of considerable exaggeration. ”

“ The eyes, again, now contracted to a pin’s point, now expanded full to gaze at you with expressionless pupils, seem to move by a mechanism beyond the creature’s control. Voiceless and limbless, the bulky cetacean sways to and fro, the very embodiment of stupid, feeble helplessness, a thing for shrimps to mock at and limpets to grow upon. ”

“ Cetacea.—The absence of Cetacea from rocks older than the Eocene has been frequently adduced as lending countenance to the theory of the very late appearance of the highest class of Vertebrata on the earth. Professor Sedgwick possesses in the Cambridge Museum a mass of anchylosed cervical vertebræ of a whale, which he found in drift clay near Ely, and which he has no doubt was washed out of the Kimmeridge clay, an upper member of the Oolite. According to Professor Owen, it exhibits well-marked specific characters, distinguishing it from all other known recent or fossil cetacea. Dr. ”

“ Cestui que use (sometimes cestui à que use) means “the person for whose benefit a use” is created (see TRUST) . Cestui que vie is “the person for whose life” lands are held by another (see Remainder) .
CETACEA (from the Gr. κέτος, a whale) , the name of the mammalian order represented by whales, dolphins, porpoises, &c. From their fish-like form, which is manifestly merely an adaptation to their purely aquatic life, these creatures are often regarded 769 as fishes, although they are true mammals, with warm blood, and suckle their young. ”

“ As far as we are concerned, the chief difference is in their way of breathing. The cetaceans breathe like ourselves, and are obliged to come to the surface of the water to take air; while fishes have a special apparatus, which I will explain to you presently, which enables them to breathe in the water. This is a disadvantage to the cetacean in his fish life; nevertheless, of all the mammals (as may easily be imagined) he is the one who can remain longest under the water. ”

“ Remains of Cetacea are tolerably abundant in Tertiary deposits, both in Europe and North America. In the Lower Pliocene of England, France, and Germany, extinct species of five or six living genera of whales and dolphins have been found; and most of these occur also in the Upper Miocene, along with many others, referred to about a dozen extinct genera.
In the Post-pliocene deposits of Vermont and South Carolina, several extinct species have been found belonging to living genera ”

“ If we leave out the cetacea, that live in the water, and the cud-chewers, which are the clean beasts, we have one thousand eight hundred and twenty-five species; and male and female of these, a total of three thousand six hundred and fifty. ”

“ The same may be said of the general arrangement of the muscles in the trunk and tail of the Cetacea, the principal muscles in this case being distributed, not on the sides, but on the dorsal and ventral aspects. ”

“ The classification of the constituents of a chaos, nothing less is here essayed. Listen to what the best and latest authorities have laid down.
"No branch of Zoology is so much involved as that which is entitled Cetology," says Captain Scoresby, A.D. 1820.
"It is not my intention, were it in my power, to enter into the inquiry as to the true method of dividing the cetacea into groups and families.... Utter confusion exists among the historians of this animal" (sperm whale) , says Surgeon Beale, A.D. 1839.
"Unfitness to pursue our research in the unfathomable waters." ”

“ A difficulty that might be suggested in the derivation of the Cetacea from the Ungulata, arising from the latter being at the present day mainly vegetable-feeders, is not great, as the primitive ungulates were probably omnivorous, as their least modified descendants, the pigs, are still; and the aquatic branch might easily have gradually become more and more piscivorous, as we know, from the structure of their bones and teeth, the purely terrestrial members have become by degrees more exclusively graminivorous. ”

“ THE sea is inhabited by three families of mammalian animals, which, though they may be so "very like a whale" as to have been sometimes spoken of together as cetaceans, are quite distinct in their structure and habits, and show evidences of distinct origin. They are the cetaceans, including the whales, dolphins, and porpoises; the pinnipeds, including the seals, sea-lions, and walruses; and the sirenians, including the manatees and dugongs. ”

“ The majority of this class of animals do not appear to perform this function with any regularity, and it is in this respect that the sperm whale is remarkably distinguished among the cetacea; and it is from his peculiar mode of “blowing” that he is recognized, even at a great distance, by experienced whalemen. When at the surface for the purposes of respiration the whale generally remains still, but occasionally continues making a gentle progress during the whole of his breathing-time. ”

“ A century ago, the whale was the object of most profitable fisheries, and those huge cetacea are now so uncommon that their pursuit is given up by most of the nations that once grew rich by following it. ”

“ All the ordinary and more observable orders of the inhabitants of the sea, except the cetacea, have been found in the cretaceous formation—zoophytes, radiaria, mollusks, crustacea, (in great variety of species,) and fishes in smaller variety. In Europe, remains of the marine saurians have been found; they may be presumed to have become extinct in that part of the globe before this time, their place and destructive office being perhaps supplied by cartilaginous fishes, of which the teeth are found in great quantities. ”

“ The vulgar notion of a Whale is an enormous creature with an extremely capacious mouth, but the fact is that many of the Cetacea are of relatively moderate dimensions, though doubtless, on the other hand, the magnitude of some is perfectly amazing. ”

“ These points, however, are but few, and are not of such great weight as those which ought to be present to establish a claim to separate treatment for the Cetacea as opposed to the Eutheria. If this group of mammals can be tacked on anywhere, it appears to us that the nearest relatives are not, as is sometimes put forward, the Ungulata or the Carnivora, but the Edentata. There are quite a number of rather striking features in which a likeness is shown between these apparently diverse orders of mammals. ”

“ The skin of the different members of the Whale family is generally quite hairless, which very rarely happens in the case of other Mammalia. The largest of other animals are small when compared with many of the Cetacea. These great creatures swim quite rapidly, however. Because of the air contained in their chest, and the great quantity of grease with which their tissues are charged, and the great strength of their tail in pushing them forward, they move easily through the waves, looking for the Fish, Molluscs and Crustacea, which they eat in enormous quantities. ”

“ In the old male these ridges reach an enormous size and almost meet in the middle line. In Physeter, the Sperm whale, these ridges are not developed; the maxillae and premaxillae unite with the other bones of the crest enclosing an enormous half basin-shaped cavity, at the base of which are the very asymmetrical anterior narial apertures.
In all living Cetacea the hyoid has the same general shape, consisting firstly of a crescentic bone formed by the fusion of the thyro-hyals with the basi-hyal, and secondly of the anterior cornu formed principally by the strong stylo-hyal. ”

“ Order VIII.—RUMINANTIA, or cud-chewing Mammals. Four families—1st, Hornless Ruminants, Camels, Musks; 2nd, Cervidæ, true horns shed periodically, Deer; 3rd, Persistent horns, Giraffes; 4th, Hollow-horned Ruminants, Antelopes, Goats, Sheep and Oxen.
Order IX.—CETACEA. Three families—1st, Herbivorous Cetacea, Manatees, Dugongs; 2nd, Ordinary Cetacea, Porpoises; 3rd, Balænidæ, Whales.
ORDER BIMANA.
Some people have an extreme repugnance to the idea that man should be treated of in connection with other animals. ”