Introductory material
Reading edition
Seals and Whales
OF THE
BRITISH SEAS.
The two great groups of Marine Mammals known as Pinnipedia and Cetacea, although widely separated from each other zoologically, naturally present themselves to us side by side as inhabiting the same regions; the facilities for studying the one are also equally favourable for obtaining a knowledge of the other. It is remarkable that in few groups of the animal world, until recently, has so much confusion existed as in the Seals and Whales. This has, of late years, through the labours of European and American naturalists, to some extent been remedied, although very much still remains to be done, the literature of the subject being still so scattered, that much of it is inaccessible to the ordinary student. The arrangement and nomenclature adopted in the following short account of the Seals and Whales inhabiting or occurring in the seas, or on the shores, surrounding the British Islands, is that used by Mr. Alston in the second edition of Bell’s ‘British Quadrupeds.’