HARDWICKE'S SCIENCE-GOSSIP. 



199 



sub-orders : First, ]\Tystacoc€ti, or Bahviwidea, in all 

 the members of which baleen takes the place of teeth, 

 which are never developed, disappearing before birth; 

 second, Odontocdi or Ddphinoidca, in which teeth, 

 sometimes very numerous, are always developed after 

 birth. The first sub-order is a very restricted one, 

 embracing only two families, Balcp.nidce and Bahviio- 

 ptcridcc, to the former of which belong the two genera 

 of Right-whales, Balicna and 'Eitbalccua ; and to the 

 latter, two genera, namely, Mcgaptera and Balczno- 

 ptera. To these two genera* belong the Rorquals, 

 which occasionally occur in the British seas. The 

 second sub-order, Odontoccti, contains the families 

 of Physeteridce, represented by the Sperm Whale, 

 Hyperoodott, and several allied species ; PlatanistidcB, 

 some curious forms found only in India and South 

 America ; and Delphinidoc, comprising the Narwhal, 

 Beluga, or White Whale, Grampus, Porpoise, and 

 Dolphins. The total number of British Cdacea has 

 been variously estimated ; Bell, whom we shall follow, 

 enumerates twenty-two ; Dr. Gray, in 1864, describes 

 tliirty species, and in 1873 thirty-three species. 



The first species, both in order and importance, is 

 undoubtedly the well-known Bahina Mysticetus, the 

 GREENLANDor Right- WHALE (fig. 157), as it is called 

 by the whalers. I use the terai well-known perhaps 

 unadvisedly ; for although for centuries it has engaged 

 the energies and industry of the merchant seamen of 

 Northern Europe, so little was known, of it scientifi- 

 cally that until Eschriclit obtained a skeleton from 

 Holsteinsbor^,- in Greenland, in 1846, not a single 

 skeleton of this species had ever found its way into 

 any European museum. That this species ever in- 

 habited the British seas seems veiy doubtful, and the 

 i-ecorded instances of its occurrence are unsatisfactory 

 in the extreme. The most positive record is that in 

 Messrs. Paget's "Natural History of Great Yarmouth." 

 They say: ^' Balitna Mysticetus — common Whale — 

 a small one taken near Yarmouth, July 8, 1784." 

 Upon writing to Sir James Paget, if possible to obtain 

 further information, he tells me, " I am soriy I can 

 give you no information respecting the whale taken 

 off Yarmouth in 1784; I have no notes as to the 

 source from which I derived the statement, but 

 probably it was from some MS. of Mr. Dawson 

 Turner's. It is not likely that any bones of the 

 whale were kept in Yarmouth, for there was no 

 naturalist there at the time, and the whaling-trade, 

 which was then actively carried on from the port, 

 must have made whales* bones very common." This 

 is all that is ever likely to be learned of the Yarmouth 

 Right -whale ; but the season at which it occurred 

 would render the heated seas on our coast utterly un- 

 bearable to an ice-loving inhabitant of the Arctic 

 circle. This, with its small size, would seem to point 

 to a closely-allied species to be mentioned soon. 

 Sibbold records what he considers was probably a 



* Physalns and Sibbaldius are now rejected by Prof. Flower. 



Right-whale at Peterhead in 1682; and a whale re- 

 corded at Tynemouth by Willughby may have been 

 of this species. In the first edition of Bell's " Quadru- 

 peds " is a communication from the Rev, Mr. Barclay 

 to the effect that on the coast of Zetland dead or very 

 lean whales of this species have several times been 

 found or have run aground ; but in the second edition 

 of the same work the author states that "there is no 

 proof these references do not apply to some other 

 species." This is all we know of the Right-whale 

 as occurring in British waters in recent times, and 

 none of the instances are at all satisfactory. 



The extreme northern habitat assigned to this species 

 by those who have devoted much time and labour to 

 the investigation of the subject, I think clearly proves 

 that it must either have changed its habitat, wliich its 

 present habits seem to render improbable, or that some 

 other species formerly inhabited the temperate seas 

 outside the Arctic circle extending southward to 

 the Atlantic as far as latitude 40", for it is beyond 

 doubt that a brisk trade was carried on in former 

 times by the Basque population in the Bay of Biscay 

 and adjacent seas as far back as the 8th or loth 

 centuiy. That such a southern species, distinct 

 from tlie northern Right-whale did exist, is, I think, 

 proved by Professors Eschricht and Reinhardt in 

 their splendid memoir of the " Greenland Whale," a 

 ti-anslation of which, edited by Professor Flower, was 

 published by the Ray Society in 1866., This whale, 

 which was formerly distinguished by the name of 

 Sard^ by the French, and Nordkaper by the Dutch, 

 they have called Balana biscayensis : it was smaller 

 than the northern species, probably about forty feet 

 in length, the head not more than one-fourth of the 

 entire lengtli, the colour uniformly black, and the 

 baleen much shorter in proportion than in the larger 

 species. Of this whale, once abounding in the North 

 Atlantic and North Sea, and finding emplo3Tiient for 

 so many hardy and daring seamen, the only remains 

 now known to exist are the cervical vertebrae dredged 

 up off Lyme Regis, now in the British Museum,* and 

 the skeleton of a young one which was taken in the 

 hai^bour of St. Sebastian on the 1 7th Jiinuary, 1854. 

 The mother, which was seen with it, escaped, but the 

 little one was caught, and a drawing of it made by 

 Dr. Monedero ; the skeleton was preserved for the 

 museum of Pampeluna ; thence it was removed by 

 Prof, Eschricht in 1858 to the Copenhagen Museum, 

 for which he purchased it. As there is every proba- 

 bility that any Right-whale occurring on our coast 

 belonged to this species, it will at once be seen what 

 interest is attached to any scrap of information on the 

 subject, and how imperative it is to pursue to the 

 uttermost any clue which might possibly throw light 

 on the history of this probably now extinct species. 

 It is worthy of remark, that in the Southern ocean 



* The vertebrae in the British Museum is the type of //ati- 

 halcEtta britatmica (Gray) ; B. cisaixtica (Cope) is also probably 

 identicalwith B. biscayensis. 



