xii A STRANDED RORQUAL 355 



above the waves the lamellae fell and covered the eyes." Whale- 

 bone, too, has been often spoken of as " the fin of a whale," " the 

 finnes that stand forth of their mouths." The value of whale- 

 bone is still great, in spite of various substitutes which are now 

 used in its place. In the year 1897, for example, the value of 

 this article was 2000 per ton. As a single Whale may produce 

 several tons of this material, it is not surprising to find that the 

 results of a whaling voyage may be very profitable. 



Fam. 1. Balaenopteridae. This genus Balaenoptera includes 

 the Rorquals, which are Whalebone Whales of large size, differing 

 from the Eight Whales in three important external characters : 

 the head is comparatively small ; there is a dorsal fin ; the throat 

 is marked by numerous longitudinal furrows. The bones of the 

 cranium are not so arched as in the Eight Whales, and as a 

 consequence the plates of baleeii are shorter. The hand is only 

 four-fingered. The cervical vertebrae are for the most part all 

 free. One of the earliest records of a Whale stranded in the 

 Thames was probably of a species of this genus in the year 1658, 

 and is thus described by. John Evelyn : " A large whale was 

 taken betwixt my land butting on the Thames and Greenewich, 

 which drew an infinite concourse to see it, by water, horse, coach, 

 and on foot, from London and all parts. ... It was killed with 

 a harping yron, struck in the head, out of which spouted blood 

 and water by two tunnells, and after an horrid grone it ran 

 quite on shore and died. Its length was 58 foot, heighth 16 ; 

 black skinn'd like coach leather, very small eyes, greate taile, 

 onely two small films, a picked snout, and a mouth so wide that 

 divers men might have stood upright in it ; no teeth, but suck'd 

 slime onely as thro' a grate of that bone which we call whale- 

 bone, the throate yet so narrow as would not have admitted the 

 least of fishes ... all of it prodigious, but in nothing more 

 wonderful that an animal of so greate a bulk should be nourished 

 onely by slime thro' those grates." 



Professor Collett has recently given 1 an elaborate account of the 

 characters and habits of this great Whale (Balaenoptera musculus). 

 Though a large beast (44 to 67 feet in length) it is exceeded by 

 other Eorquals ; it is of a dark grey blue colour above, white, for 

 the most part, below. The dorsal fin is large and high ; the 

 flippers relatively slender and small. The whole throat from the 



1 In Proc. Zool. Soc. 1886, p. 243. 



