DELPHINUS, the dolphin, in natural history, a genus of Mammalia of the or der Cetw. Generic character : teeth in each jaw ; spiracle on the head. Shaw enumerates six species, and Gmelin four. C. phoczna, or the porpesse, is the most abundant of cetaceous animals, and is found particularly in the European seas, whence it often advances very nearly to the mouths of considerable rivers. Its general length is from five to eight feet. Porpesses are gregarious, and frequently seen frolicking on the water, and playing their uncouth gambols, more especially in boisterous and tempestuous wea ther. They feed principally on smaller fishes, and pursue the shoals of herrings and mackrel with apparently unwearied vigour and insatiable appetite. They are covered immediately under the skin with a fatty substance of considerable thickness, and which produces a large quantity of oil. The porpesse was for merly considered, not merely as eatable, but as a species of luxury, being served up at noble and royal tables. Such, how ever, are the revolutions of taste, that by the least fastidious appetite this food is at present decidedly rejected.
D. delphis, or the dolphin, has the same general habits and appearance with the preceding, but is considerably longer, measuring occasionally even ten feet. It abounds both in the Pacific and Euro pean Seas, and its appearance is in gene ral preliminary to a tempest. It not only pursues and attacks small fish, on which indeed it subsists, but assails the whale itself, and is stated to have been seen firmly adhering to whales as they have leaped from the water. The ancients
appear to have had almost a superstitious attachment to this animal, and relate va rious anecdotes of it, implying a peculiar susceptibility of gratitude and affection, a strong attachment to mankind, and a rapturous fondness for music. In natural history, however, the ancients were more fanciful than accurate, and, com pared with the moderns, were as dwarfs to giants. The porpesse, though natu rally straight, swims in a crooked form ; and the dolphin is said, by Linnmus, to be crooked only when it leaps. Shaw thinks it assumes this form also in swimming. See Pisces, Plate III. fig. 5.
D. orca, grampus. This is one of the most ravenous and formidable inhabitants of the ocean. It is found both in the At lantic and the Mediterranean, in the north ern and the southern seas, and is about twelve feet broad, and twenty-four in length. It preys both upon the porpesse and dolphin, as well as upon smaller fish. It frequently attacks seals, even on the uncovered rocks, dislodging and often destroying them by its dorsal fin. But it is particularly and irreconcileably hostile to whales, which it attacks without the slightest hesitation, and often fastens on with the most persevering and destruc tive tenacity.