BEAKED WHALES 223 



panying figures derived from Captain Gray's paper 

 on the whale show. It is interesting to note that 

 it is the males which show this peculiar form ; the 

 females nearly always* remain in the condition of 

 young males. The square appearance of the head 

 in front is produced by an increase in thickness of 

 the crests of the maxilla:;, which this whale has in 

 common with JBerardius, only more developed even 

 in the young. 



Hyperoodon rostratum, M tiller, f This whale is a 

 common northern species, and has been often recorded 

 on our own coasts. The first recorded occurrence 

 was at Maldon in Essex, in 1717. j It varies in colour 

 from black in the young to light brown in the old 

 animals. Very old animals turn a pale yellowish with 

 white about them. The under surface is always 

 greyish white. It will be noted that this change of 

 colour is very similar to that which takes place in 

 Beluga. The length seems to vary between twenty 

 and thirty feet ; but Hunter described a skull (since 

 missing) which apparently belonged to a still larger 

 specimen "thirty or forty feet long." 



Captain Gray noted that the tail of this whale, 

 instead of being notched in the centre as is common 



* Sir W. H. FLOWER " On the Whales of the Genus Hyperoodon? 

 Proc. Zool. Soc., 1882, p. 722. D. GRAY, " Notes on the Characters and 

 Habits of the Bottlenose Whale," ib., p. 726, and see p. 227. 



t O. F. MULLER, in his Zool. Dan. Prodromus, 1776, p. 7, first gave the 

 specific name ; he called the whale Balcena rostrata. 



t TURNER, " On the occurrence of the Bottlenosed Whale, etc," Proc. 

 Roy. Phys. Soc. Edin., ix., p. 25. 



