204 BULLETIN OF THE 



pooin (1 by the whalemen, as they run so swiftly they cannot bo killed. 

 1 Lave known n few to be killed by shooting them with a bomb lance. 

 A\ hen they have been killed in this way in our bay they always sink 

 to the bottom (they being not a fat whale), and remain there some few 

 days, during which time much of the blubber is eaten off by sharks. 

 I have known two of this species to run on shore in the night, in our 

 harbor, and be left by the receding tide. When they were killed there 

 appeared to be no indications of disease, and the cause of their running 

 on the beach could not be learned. One of them yielded fourteen and 

 the other twenty barrels of oil." In a subsequent communication 

 Captain Atwood add-: "The finback is a species that yields only a 

 small quantity of oil compared with its size ; the blubber is thinner 

 than in other species. The right whale killed here, of which the skele- 

 ton is in the Museum of Comparative Zoology, was forty-seven feet 

 long, and yielded eighty barrels and fourteen gallons of oil ; a fin- 

 back since killed here was fifty-four feet long, and made only twenty 

 barrels of oil, though a good fat whale of its kind." 



21. SibbaldillS tubei'OStlS Con:. A specimen at first doubt- 

 fully referred to tic S. laticeps Gray,* by Professor Cope, but since 

 regarded by him as a new species. j was captured in Mobjack Bay, 

 Virginia, in May, I860. It being a somewhat northern species, it should 

 probably be included in the present list. 



25. [Sibbaldius borealis Fisch.] " Sulphur-bottom Whale. 

 Rare. "This species i- said to occur on our coast. Like the fin- 

 hark, it has on its back a very small dorsal fin. Being very much 

 elongated, it is a swift runner, and passes through the water with a 

 velocity SO great that the whalemen cannot kill them in the same way 

 that they take the other species. I have never seen it dead, and know 

 but little- about it."' 



26. [? Ealcsnoptera rostratra. I have not yet identified this 



one.] " GliAMPUS. Occasional. When seen here alone, we know it 

 by that name. It is the opinion of some of our whalemen, with whom 

 I have conversed respecting this whale, that it is not a distinct species, 

 bul the young of the finback." 



* Proc. Phil. Acad. Nat. Sci., 1866, p. 297. f fbi !.. 1869, p. 1G. 



