sternum. Our materials for description became thus so far 

 complete. 



The skeleton of the first of these two whales, which, as said 

 before, was a male, has been erected on strong iron supports, 

 and the cartilaginous substance into which the bones of Cetacea 

 so readily pass, and which occurs so plentifully between the 

 vertebrae, has been carefully replaced by gutta percha substi- 

 tutes, after drawings taken carefully by me on the spot where 

 the carcass was cut up. 



The whole length of skeleton as set up is thirty-three feet 

 six inches, from which if three feet one and a-quarter inches 

 be subtracted for the length of the intervertebral cartilages, 

 there will remain a total length of bone in the skeleton of thirty 

 feet four and three-quarter inches. The whole length of the 

 head from snout to occiput is nine feet six inches. In the 

 " Osseme?is Fossiles^^ Cuvier has not given us an exact compa- 

 rison between the whole length of skeleton and the length of 

 the head in the sperm whales he examined, because neither of 

 his skeletons were quite entire. His most perfect skeleton was 

 the one purchased by him in London, and which must be 

 considered as typically to belong to the true sperm whale, or 

 his Physeter macrocephalus. Now all that he says of the 

 whole length of this is, that it was about fifty-four feet long, 

 " to which two or three feet more may be added for the inter- 

 vertebral cartilages." Beale does not state whether the 

 Yorkshire skeleton is set up with any allowance or substitute 

 for the size of the intervertebral cartilages, or whether it con • 

 sists of the bones alone, but he states the extreme length from 

 snout to tail to be forty-nine feet seven inches. However, I 

 am inclined to believe that this is the joint length of the bony 

 vertebree alone, because he states that the animal was 

 measured shortly after death by Dr. Alderson, and found to 

 be fifty-eight feet six inches ; and nine feet seems to be too 

 great a difference between the length of the living animal and 

 its skeleton, unless we are to make allowance for the length 

 of the intervertebral cartilages. Assuming this, I offer the 

 following table as showing the comparative measurements of 

 those three skeletons. 



