the Vertebrce in the Wliale. OS 



the intervertebral substance, it had a smooth surface, marked 

 witli a great number of concentric Jines, answering to the ar- 

 rangement of the fibres in the intervertebral tissue, which adher- 

 ed to this face of the bone with great strength. This marking 

 was deficient towards the centre where the intervertebral sub- 

 stance i& fluid. 



The facility with which these bones are detached, is the rea- 

 son why we never find them adhering to the vertebrae of those 

 young whales which have been wrecked on our coast, and whose 

 skeletons have been exposed to the action of the waves and the 

 weather. Their flat shape, too, renders them liable to be cover- 

 ed by the sand, and hence I have never known them to be found 

 separately, even when the vertebrae and other bones of this spe- 

 cies of whale were scattered along the coast in great numbers, 

 as happened at Dungarvan some years after several of these 

 animals had been captured and dragged ashore by the fisher- 

 men *. 



The bones I have described must evidently be considered in 

 the light of terminal epiphyses of the bodies of the vertebrae, 

 and are deserving of notice on account of the facility with which 

 they can be detached, even in very large^ and of course not very 

 young, animals of this species, as I observed in the two skele- 

 tons preserved in the College of Surgeons, one of which mea- 

 sures thirty feet in length ; so that when the skeleton has been 

 artificially prepared, they resemble separate intervertebral bones 

 rather than vertebral epiphyses. In the land mammalia the 

 consolidation takes place much more rapidly, and a few years 

 are sufficient to efface all traces of former separation between 

 the epiphysis and the body of the vertebra ; the comparative 

 slowness of this process in the whale, is probably referrible to 

 the longevity of the animal, and the greater length of time ne- 

 cessary to complete its growth. A knowledge of this fact puts 

 us in possession of a new and nseful mark of the animaPs age, 

 independent of its size, and it is for this purpose I have brought 

 it forward, for although not noticed by any author I have seen 



• Many years ago we picked up several of these intervertebral looking 

 bones, upwards of a foot in diameter, on the shore of the island of Yell, one 

 of the Shetlands. In their neighbourhood was a skeleton of a whale, about 

 40 feet long, part of which we brought to Leith.— Edit. 



