which the generic name
has been derived, but yet was undoubtedly distinct. The killer whales
have a very high dorsal fin in the middle of the back, with very large
pectoral flippers as broad as long; in _Orcella_ the back fin is low
and behind the middle of the body, and the pectoral fin is only half
as broad as long. In the ca'ing whale the back fin is more towards
the shoulders, and the flippers are long and narrow; the genus
_Orcella_ in fact seems to be intermediate between the dolphin and
the ca'ing whale, combining the head of _Globicephalus_ with the body
of _Delphinus_. Dr. Anderson, however, points out further
differences than the external ones I have above alluded to. _Orca_,
he says, is distinguished by a "more powerfully built skeleton, with
considerably fewer vertebrae, there being only a maximum of
fifty-three in it to a maximum of sixty-three in _Orcella_." In
_Orca_ generally four or five cervical vertebrae are ankylosed as
in the cachelots, but in the two species of _Orcella_ only the atlas
and axis are joined. "In the killers and ca'ing whales the ribs are
transferred to the transverse processes at the seventh dorsal,
whilst in _Orcella_ the transference does not take place until the
eighth." The skull resembles that of _Orca_ in the breadth of the
upper jaw being produced by the maxillaries, whereas in
_Globicephalus_ this effect is caused by the premaxillaries. The
teeth resemble the killer's.

As I have said so much about the killer whale, I may digress a little
to explain what it is, though it is not a denizen of the Indian seas.
It is to the Cetacea what the shark is to fishes--a voracious tyrant
with a capacious mouth, armed with formidable teeth. It hesitates
not to attack the largest sperm and Greenland whales, and the smaller
whales, porpoises and seals will spring out of water and strand
themselves on shore in terror at its approach. It ranges from twenty
to thirty feet in length, and is of so gluttonous a character that
in one recorded case a killer had been found choked in the attempt
to swallow a _fifteenth_ seal, the other fourteen, with thirteen
porpoises, being found in its stomach!

According to Scammon three or four of them do not hesitate to grapple
with the largest baleen whale; and, as described by Dr. Murie, "the
latter often, paralysed through fear, lie helpless and at their mercy.
The killers, like a pack of hounds, cluster about the animal's head,
breach over it, seize it by