. An introduction to the study of mammals living and extinct. Mammals. 238 CETACEA passing freely from one to the other, it is never seen so far south as Cape Farewell; but on the Labrador coast, '\\'here a cold stream sets down from the north, its range is somewhat fai'ther. In the Behring Sea, according to Scammon, " it is seldom seen south of the iifty-fifth parallel, which is about the farthest southern extent of the winter ice, while on the Sea of Okhotsk its southern limit is about the latitude of 54°." As has been abundantly shown by Eschricht and Reinhardt in the case of the
. An introduction to the study of mammals living and extinct. Mammals. 238 CETACEA passing freely from one to the other, it is never seen so far south as Cape Farewell; but on the Labrador coast, '\\'here a cold stream sets down from the north, its range is somewhat fai'ther. In the Behring Sea, according to Scammon, " it is seldom seen south of the iifty-fifth parallel, which is about the farthest southern extent of the winter ice, while on the Sea of Okhotsk its southern limit is about the latitude of 54°." As has been abundantly shown by Eschricht and Reinhardt in the case of the Greenland seas, " every- thing tends to prove," Scammon says, " that the Ikila'ita iiii/sfmiiis is truly an ' ice whale,' for among the scattered floes, or about the borders of the ice-fields or barriers, is its home and feeding-ground. It is true that these animals are pursued in the open water during the summer months; but in no instance have we learned of their being captured south of A\-here winter ice-fields are occasionallj^ met ; The occurrence of this species, therefore, on the British or any European coast is exceedingly unlikely, as when ali\'e and in health the southern limit of its range in the North Sea has been ascertained to be from the east coast of Greenland at 04° N. lat. along the north of Iceland towards Spitzbergen, and a glance at a phj'sical chart will show that there are no ciu-reTits setting south- wards which could bear a disabled animal or a floating carcase to British shores. To this A yriori improbability may be added the fact that no authentic instance has been recorded of the capture or stranding of this species upon any European coast; for the cases in which it has been reported as seen in British waters may be ex- plained by the supposition of one of the other species of the genus being mistaken for it. Still, as two other essentially Arctic Cetaceans, the Narwhal and the Beluga, have in a few undoubted instances found
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