172 NATURAL HISTORY ESSAYS 



tragus ; the jaws curve downwards in the middle 

 line. The dorsal fin is almost absent, though in- 

 dicated by a slight ridge : the blunt flippers are 

 short, broad, and of an oval contour; the tail, set 

 horizontally as in all cetaceans, is flat and powerful 

 The smooth skin of the adult beluga is of a beautiful 

 creamy or waxy whiteness throughout. Newly born 

 animals are dark slate colour ; calves of eight feet in 

 length are dark slate mottled with chocolate ; next 

 they become yellowish, and finally white.^ A young 

 skull of King's white whale (the so-called Delphinap- 

 teriLs kingii) was said to have been brought from 

 the coast of Australia many years ago ; it was des- 

 cribed by Dr. Gray in "Ann. Philos." 1827, p 375, 

 and figured in " Zool. Ereb. and Terror" p. 30, 

 pi. VII. It is now in the National Collection. 



First described by the Russian naturalist Pallas 

 (beluga = white in the Russian language), this beauti- 

 ful whale inhabits the circumpolar seas, being /(^r 

 excellence the whale of Greenland. It is also plen- 

 tiful off the coasts of Novaya Zemlia and Spitsbergen, 

 in Hudson's Bay, Bass Straits, Behring Sea, Okhotsk 

 Sea and the St. Lawrence River in North America. 

 A school of at least three hundred and fifteen indi- 

 viduals was recorded from Point Barrow, Alaska, in 



1 An ein])ryo beluga in the Roj-al College of Surgeons' Museum is of 

 a smooth shining creamy whiteness tiirougjiout, giving an impression of 

 hardness as if it had been cast in plaster ; the bones of the hand can be 

 seen in the "biscuit china "like }li^)per. Doubtless the slate colour of 

 the newly born calf is due to later pigmentation in the rete mucosum of 

 the skin. 



