82 THE WHALEBONE WHALES OF THE WESTERN NOBTH ATLANTIC. 



he thereupon named Sibbaldius tuherosus. The account of it first given, in 1866, is 

 as follows {23, 8) : 



"The whale alluded to {Proceedings, 1865, p. 168) as having been seen in 

 Mobjuck Bay, Virginia, was stated to have been captured b}- Dr. P. A. Taliafei'ro, 

 of William and Mary College, AVilliamsburg, and prepaied and set up. It is a 

 short-finned Megaptera, probably of the species M. osphyia. Pi'of. T. has kindly 

 furnished me with the following details as to its structure, carefully di'awn up by 

 himself. 



"Length fiom end of muzzle over convexity of back, forty-three feet nine 

 inches; cirth about nineteen feet; length from end of muzzle to axilla (external 

 measurement), fifteen feet; breadth of head across inferior margin of jaws, eight 

 feet. Length of the pectoial extremity, /b'Wr/lje^; greatest breadth fifteen inches; 

 they were situated close behind the angle of the mouth. There were three hun- 

 dred and sixty laminae of baleen, extending on either side of the mouth about six 

 feet along the jaw, the longest about eighteen to twenty inches. The head was 

 acute. The folds of the tlu'oat many and capacious. The dorsal fin was repre- 

 sented by a conical mass covered by horny integument, without any membi-anous 

 appendage, situated well posterioi'ly. The body neai- the tail very slendei'. The 

 flukes suddenly expand to a breadth of ten feet. The cervical vertebra^ were all 

 distinct. Color: jet black above, white on the belly; sides beautifully marbled by 

 the combination of the two colors. 



"The most striking feature in this specimen is the shortness of the ])ectoral 

 limbs, being relatively neaily half less than in the specimen of the usphyia at 

 NiaiT-ara, one-half the length of the cranium, and only one-tenth the total. This is 

 verj^ different from any of the hitherto known species, and without doubt distinct." 



Cope stated in 1866, as just quoted, that the skeleton had been prepared and 

 set up, but did not say where, or by whom. Later in the same year he stated that 

 the skeleton was in the museum of the Philadelphia Academy, but in 1869 remarked 

 a^ain that the deposit of the specimen in the Academy had been delayed, but was 

 expected in a short time. He left it uncertain, therefore, whether the skeleton of 

 the type was or was not in Philadelphia. In 1899, and again in 1900,1 visited the 

 Academy of Natural Sciences, and through the kindness of Dr. Dixon and Mr. 

 Stone was enabled to look over all, or nearly all, the bones of ^vhales then in the 

 museum. I did not find any coiTesponding to >S'. triberosiis, and it would seem 

 probable that the skeleton never reached Philadelphia. This view is strengthened 

 by the fact that a writer in the American Field in 1889,^ repeating the stoiy of the 

 captui'e of the whale, as he had heard it fi'om the lips of Dr. Taliaferro, who 

 pursued and killed the animal, proceeds as follows : 



" I [Di-. Taliaferro] took the whalebone out of liis mouth, and bade the servants 

 help themselves to his blubber if they wanted to. , . . Although we got all 

 the servants and dug huge holes and buried the carcass in sections, yet, like Ban- 

 quo's ghost, it would not down. . . . His jawbones now ornament the dooi's 

 of my [Dr. Taliaferro's f\ carriage-house and I have several of his vertebrae, which 

 come in handy as footstools." 



•"Reynard," American Field, March 2, 1889, pp. 196-198. 



