302 A BOOK OF WHALES 



Sir William Flower* after an examination of the 

 skull only ; since Sir \Y. Flower wrote, the late 

 Professor Burmeisterf has described the other bones 

 and certain of the viscera. The facts thus dis- 

 covered are not so strongly in favour of the Plata- 

 nistid affinities of Pontoporia. But, though it may 

 be regarded as leaning towards the dolphins, there 

 can be no great harm in leaving it for the present in 

 the family Platanistidae. 



The seven cervical vertebrae are all free, as in 

 other Platanistids ; there are ten dorsal vertebrae 

 only. Burmeister gives also seven lumbars and 

 eighteen caudals, this bringing up the total number 

 of vertebrae to forty-two. I mid the same total 

 number in a specimen in the British Museum, but 

 allow only five lumbars, the rest being caudals. My 

 enumeration must be accepted if we are to allow the 

 presence of the first chevron bone to mark the com- 

 mencement of the caudal series. This whale, there- 

 fore, is dolphin-like in the greater number of the 

 lumbar vertebrae that is, of course, as compared 

 with Inia. The sternum consists of two pieces 

 which are ossified ; Burmeister mentions a cartilagin- 

 ous piece between. The hinder half of the sternum 

 was divided longitudinally into two halves ; the 

 British Museum specimen appeared to be adult. 



There are ten pairs of ribs, of which 1 found the 

 first three pairs to be double-headed. The ribs in 

 this o-enus are not like those of Inia. but like those 



o 



* In his memoir upon Inia quoted above. 

 T Proc. Zool. Soc., 1867, p. 484. 



