2. EFBAL^NA. 95 



" The whale feeling herself covered and uncomfortable from 

 barnacles on her skin, strikes in from the mouth of the river 

 (Murray), and there plays and gambols for hours just outside or 

 among the breakers. Having roUed the barnacles off in the fresh 

 water, she takes to sea. It is the knowledge that the fresh water 

 kills the barnacles that brings her in. Whenever it was practicable, 

 my whalers, as weU as those of the opposition fishery, were glad to 

 take advantage of this peculiarity of the fish." — Cadell, Journ. Bay. 

 Geogr. Soc. 1855, 179. 



This is most probably distinct from Eubalcena australis (Balcena 

 australis, Yoy. Pole Sud). 



Captain Sganzin (Mem. de la Soc. du Mus. H. N. de Strasbourg, 

 iii. 2) states , that Tuhicinella Balcenarum is found on the large 

 whales which are taken accidentally on the coast of Madagascar, 

 but never on the young whales which are caught in the Canal of 

 St. Maria. The latter have rarely some specimens of the Coronula 

 Diadema attached to them. The old whales which are stranded on 

 the shores of St. Maria, on the contrary, are often covered with 

 large numbers of the Coronula Balcenaris. 



Mr. Holdsworth has presented to the British Museum a specimen 

 which had been received from an American whaler, as " the Bonnet 

 of Balmia Mysticetus, obtained at the Sandwich Islands." 



Fiff. 7. 



The specimen is oblong, 11 inches long, and 8 inches wide, very 

 irregular in outline, with a very rough pitted surface, four of the pits 

 being much larger than the rest, and dividing the surface into six 

 prominences. The whole substance seems to be formed of irregular 

 homy layers placed one under the other, the lowest layer being the 

 one last formed ; and each of these layers is more or less crumpled 

 and plicated on the surface, giving the irregular appearance to the 

 mass. 



The lower layer is attached to the skin of the whale, a part of the 

 skin being attached to the inner surface of the mass or " bonnet," as 

 it is called. 



On showing the specimen to a foreign zoologist, he stated that it 

 was an excrescence on the skin of a whale, formed by the adhesion 



