The Scottish Naturalist. 151 



give the sizes of the corresponding vertebra, of the Cachalot 

 described by Flower:* — length of centrum, 8^ inches ; extreme 

 breadth, 23^ inches ; extreme height, 28 inches. This whale 

 was said to have measured 60 feet in length, and was of course 

 a larger animal than the one to which the vertebra in question per- 

 tained. Figure 5 (Plate II.) is a front view of this vertebra, and 

 shows the form of the nearly complete bony ring, on each side, 

 which, when completed is not unlike the foramen for the verte- 

 bral artery, on the cervical vertebrae of most mammals. This 

 ring is formed by a process or tubercle, ascending from the 

 upper and outter ends of the lower transverse processes until 

 they nearly meet the reduced diapophysis, which springs from 

 the outer anterior edges of the neurapophysis, descend outward 

 and downward, until these processes join together in old ani- 

 mals, and form a complete bony ring on each side of the verte- 

 bra. The ends of these processes are broken off on both sides 

 of our specimen, but as near as I can judge, when entire, those 

 on the left side would be within a y± or ^ of an inch of meet- 

 ing together. The centrum of the vertebra is broader than 

 high, and the neural canal is vertically oval. Figure 6 (Plate II.), 

 side view. 



Mr. J. Robertson describes a Cachalot in the Philosophical 

 Transactions, 1770, that stranded at Cramond in December, 

 1769. This specimen was 54 feet long, and its greatest circum- 

 ference, a little behind the eye, 30 feet. The head was nearly 

 half the length of the animal. The lower jaw was 1 1 feet long, 

 and contained 23 teeth on each side. The truncated upper jaw 

 was 9 feet high, projected 5 feet beyond the lower, and had 23 

 sockets in it on each side to accomodate the teeth of the 

 lower jaw. The pectoral fins were placed 5 feet behind the 

 corners of the mouth, and measured 3 feet in length and 18 

 inches in breadth. According to the statistical account, two 

 specimens of the Sperm whale stranded at Cramond in 1769, 

 both 54 feet in length. One, which measured 52 feet in length, 

 is said, in a foot note in Adamson's edition of Sibbald's History 

 of Fife, to have been thrown ashore at Earlsferry, in 1758. Mr. 

 Alderson, in the Cambridge Philosophical Transactions, 1827, 

 describes another, 58^ feet long, that stranded at Tunstale in 



*Zool. Soc. 1868. 



