126 The Ottawa Naturalist [Dec. 



dark. An older specimen, also before birth, and obtained on 

 Feb. 6th, 1912, was 17 inches long and the color of the young 

 specimen was now replaced by deep black, but becoming paler 

 down the sides. Adult specimens of various whales show at 

 times increase in white coloration. Thus the Humpback 

 (Megaptera) is black above, but white beneath, varied with 

 black spots, but sometimes the black underneath decreases to 

 an indefinite marbled arrangement, or, in some cases, the black 

 disappears and the under surface is white. The huge rorquals 

 or fin-back whales show similar variations, and Mr. Lyddeker 

 surmises that age or special food causes this tendencv to al- 

 binism. The Right whale of the Arctic is very black above, 

 but white beneath and where the two tints meet there occur 

 irregular patches of white extending into the black color. The 

 Killer whale or Grampus is black above, but in one specimen 

 I observed a white patch above each eye, or there may be a 

 white patch below the eye and a transverse crescentic patch 

 of white behind the huge erect dorsal fin. 



It is hardly necessary to point out that the albino porpoise 

 above described recalls the small beluga or white-whale (Del- 

 phinapterus leucas, Pallas), which is creamy white all over and 

 abounds in the mouth of the River St. Lawrence and round 

 Hudson's Straits into Hudson's Bay, and along Baffin's Land 

 and as far north as Barrow Straits.* 



Mr. A. P. Low expressed the view that the white-whale 

 industry might become an important one in many places in 

 Hudson Bay and Straits owing to its abundance, and the Hud- 

 son Bay Company, as well as the Eskimo, have long taken 

 considerable numbers for oil and leather, while the boiled skin is 

 a native dainty and the dark colored meat is also used as food . 



It is impossible in this place to enter into the somewhat 

 profound and complicated subject of the origin of albinos, an<l 

 to define the essential differences which divide them from merely 

 pale examples, or seasonal varieties. Melanism can be explained 

 partlv at anv rate, as due to environment, but albinism is no 

 doubt due to causes which are congenital, possibly pathological. 

 Merely white varieties are not albinos, and the so-called albino 

 skunk, reported as seen last year in Delaware Park, near Buffalo, 

 was not an albino. 



Curator Crandall, who saw it, described it as blue, with 

 apparently no black or white hairs intermingled and it may be 

 compared to the blue variety of Arctic fox, which is blue, or 

 rather slate grey, all the year round, and less numerous in the 

 more northerly regions than in the more southerly. In the 



*Lillieborg states that the young beluga is greyish-brown in color. 



