5. riTTSAius. 157 



15, caudal about 25. It was dark grey, with the throat and sides 

 of the pectoral white ; the belly blue, white-banded ; the pectoral 

 greyish, il. F. Cuvier refers this to the B. musndus, or Mediter- 

 ranean Rorqual. The skeleton was at Lyons in 1835. 



M. Van Beneden (Ann. Sci. Nat. n. s. vi. 159) says the tympanic 

 bones brought from Iceland by M. Quoy belonged to the B. musculus 

 of CuATier {P. antiquorum). 



Lesson records a young female taken at He d'Oleron, 54 feet long, 

 10th March, 1827. 



There is a skeleton in the Zoological Gardens, Antwerp (see Bull. 

 Acad. Roy. Brux. xxiv. 3). A skeleton not mounted, Museum Paris. 

 And a skeleton, Museum Louvain, 1836, GO feet long ; Holland, 

 1836. 



Professor Eschricht has two heads of this species at Copenhagen, 

 from Greenland. There are a head and some vertebrae at Paris, and 

 some vertebrffi at Berlin. 



M. Van Beneden observes that the Rorqual de la Mediterranee of 

 Cuvier is the Mystketos of Aristotle and the Musculus of Pliny. It 

 is the only whale that has as yet been observed in the Mediterranean. 

 It may be doubtful if the Mediterranean whale is the same as the 

 one from the Atlantic Ocean here described. Cuvier described the 

 species from the head of a specimen, now in the Paris Museum, which 

 was cast ashore on the Isle of Marguerite on the 20th of March 1797. 

 M. Van Beneden says it is the same as his Pterobalana communis, 

 but at the same time he observes that the skull of the specimen from 

 Antwerp which he describes has " la plus grande rcssemblance avec 

 cette qui a ete decritc par Rudolphi, et qui se trouve au Museum de 

 Berlin ; elle offre exactement les memes proportions." Now, Pro- 

 fessor Rudolphi's specimen is the tj'pc of M. Cuvier's Rorqual du 

 Nord, which is separated from the Mediterranean Rorqual on account 

 of the very great difference in the form and proportions of the head. 

 However, the Antwerp specimen has the simple first ribs of the 

 ti-ue FJujscdus, and I suspect that in comparing the skull with the 

 Berlin skull some characters must have been overlooked. 



" It is seen from time to time on the French coasts, especially those 

 of the Pyrenees orientales and the Var. In 1862 a female, with 

 her young, remained for more than a month chiefly in the small bays 

 of Paulilles, Port-Vendres, and Collioure. This was perhaps the 

 cetacean which, some months later, ran ashore at the rock of Borro, 

 on the Spanish coast, and was towed to Llanza, where M. Gervais 

 saw it." 



This species is found in the Mediterranean. M. Gervais observes 

 that " such Cetaceans rarely run aground on the sandy shores of 

 Languedoc and La Camargue ; but the great whale with a chan- 

 nelled belly, mentioned by Dalcchamp as having come ashore in his 

 time near Montpcllier, must be regarded as a Rorqual, and the jaws 

 of this species preserved at Frontignan have probably a similar 

 origin. 



"There is a skeleton of a whale 17 feet long in the museum of 

 Perpignan. The large whale taken at St. Cyprien has been de- 



