No. 7.] DAWSON — SKELETON OF A WHALE. 3S7 



then represented Montreal Mountain at an elevation of 400 feet 

 above the lower levels of the city, and in a wide sea which then 

 covered all the plain of the lower St. Lawrence. 



The deposit in which the remains occurred is no doubt the 

 equivalent of the Saxicava sand and gravel, and was probably a 

 beach or bank near the base of the Laurentian hills, forming the 

 west side of a bay which then occupied the Silurian country be- 

 tween the Laurentian hills north of the Ottawa, and those extend- 

 ing southward toward the Thousand Islands, and which opened 

 into a wide extension of the Gulf of St. Lawrence, reaching to 

 the hills of Eastern Canada and New England, and westward, 

 perhaps, to the Niagara escarpment at the head of Lake Ontario. 

 Such a sea might well be frequented by whales in the summer 

 season, and individuals might occasionally be stranded on shal- 

 lows or driven ashore by gales or by the pressure of floating ice. 



The bones secured consist of two vertebrae and a fragment of 

 another with a portion of a rib, and others are stated to have 

 been found. They are in good preservation but have become 

 white and brittle through the loss of their animal matter. On 

 comparison with such remains of whales as exist in the Peter 

 Redpath Museum, and with the figures and descriptions of other 

 species, I have little doubt that they belong to the Humpback 

 whale, Megaptera longimana of Gray, Balaena hoops of Fa- 

 bricius, a species still common in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, 

 and which extends its range some distance up the River, and 

 is more disposed than most others of the large whales to haunt 

 inland waters, and to approach the shores, I have seen it as far 

 up the river as the mouth of the Saguenay, and there is reason 

 to believe that occasionally it runs up much further. It is a 

 species well known to the Gasp^ whalers and often captured by 

 them. Of course with so little material it is not possible to be 

 absolutely certain as to the species, but I think it may safely be 

 referred to that above named. The larg^er of the two vertebrae, 

 a lumbar one, has the centrum eleven inches in transverse dia- 

 meter and is seven inches in length. The smaller, a dorsal, is 

 ten inches in its sjreater diameter and four in len<>;th. Through 

 the kindness of Mr. Baker, the specimens have been deposited 

 in the Peter Redpath Museum of McGill University. 



