THE WHALEBONE WEIALES OF THE "WESTERN NORTH ATLANTIC. 243 



American sources, until the time of Rudol phi's description of M. longimana in 

 1832. This author suspected that his species might be the same as Fabricius's 

 hoojys, and Schlegel in 1844 was of the same opinion. 



In 1848 Eschricht ari'ived at the same conclusion fioni an opposite point of 

 view, and in 1849 stated emphatically : " It is now raised beyond all doubt that the 

 whale stranded in the mouth of the Elbe River in 1824, and described by Rudolphi 

 as Balcena lom/hnaaa, is nothing more and nothing less than an individual of the 

 commonest species of baleen whale on the Greenland coast, known to the Green- 

 landei's as the KeporJcak / also mentioned by Anderson under the latter name and 

 introduced into systematic zoology by Klein and Bonnaterre under the appropriate 

 name Balcpva nodosa^'' {37, 57). As this latter name is derived from the descrip- 

 tion of the New England Humpback, Eschricht combines not only the Greenland 

 and European Humpbacks but those of the coast of the United States as well, in one 

 species. Gray, however, was not content to have it so, and already, in 1846, sepa- 

 rated the "Bermuda Humpback" under the name of Megaptera americana (56). 

 In 1866 he still adhered to this arrangement, employing tlie name M. americana as 

 before and citing Fabricius's Balmna hoops with a mark of interrogation, under M. 

 longimana, with the comment: "Rudolphi, and after him Schlegel, refer B. loops, 

 O. Fabricius, to tliis species ; and Professor Eschricht has no doubt that Balcena 

 loops of O. Fabricius is intended for this species, as it is called Keporhah by the 

 Greeulanders. If this be the case, Fabi'icius's description of the form and position 

 of the dorsal fin and the position of the sexual organs is not correct" (55, 124), 

 Gray seems not to have known at this time of Cope's description of M. osphyia, 

 published in 1865. In the supplement to his catalogue he quotes Cope's description, 

 but without comment. 



In 1869, Van Beneden and Gervais remark as regards osphyia and hoops (= 

 longimana) : " We do not find any difference of value for separating them " (5, 236). 

 and again in 1889 Van Beneden unites all the American Humpl)acks in one species. 



Fischer (44, 58), who studied the Humpback bones from Martinique Id. in 

 the Bordeaux museum, which should presumably represent M. bellicosa, w-as unable 

 to decide whether they should be assigned to the same species as the Greenland 

 Humpback, and closes his investigation with the inquiry whether all the Humpbacks 

 should not be regarded as belonging to a single species. 



Note. Two excellent illustrations of the Newfoundland Humpback, from negatives obtained by Mr. Wm. 



Palmer, of the U. S. National Museum, in igo3, are reproduced on plate 38, figs, i and 2. The individual represented 

 in fig. I is unusually white and on that account especially interesting. 



