110 BAL^ENOPXERIDJE. 



backwards. The bone (whalebone) is not worth much, though 

 somewhat better than the Fin-hacl\ His fin (pectoral) is sometimes 

 18 feet long, and very Avhite. Both Fia-hacls and Humphacls are 

 shaped in reeves (folds), longitudinally from head to tail, on their 

 belly and sides, as far as their fins, which are about halfway up 

 the sides." 



This description is the origin of Balxena nodosa of Bonnaterre and 

 other authors. The French authors have eAadently not understood 

 the word " reeves," and have therefore arranged these with the 

 smooth-bellied finless whales ; and Bonnaterre translates the position 

 of the fins on the sides into " presquo an milieii du corps," instead 

 of haKway up the sides. Dudley, when speaking of the Spermaceti 

 Whale, saj^s, " He has a bunch on his back Hke a Humpback," 

 which explains what he means by a bunch. 



The Humjibacks are well known to the whalers, for Beale says, 

 " The Humpback Whale possesses, like the Greenland Whale, the 

 baleen, and spouts from the top of the head, yet has a hump not 

 very dissimilar to that of the Sperm Whale." (p. 12.) 



Professor Eschricht, in the ' Danish Transactions,' 1840, has 

 figured the dorsal fin of this genus, and shows that it is more pro- 

 perly a bunch, as Dudley calls it, than a fin. 



Cuvier (Oss. Foss. v. 367) thinks that the Humpback \Vhale 

 was probably only a Avhale of another kind whose fins had been 

 injured, not recognizing in his Cape Horqual the genus of whale 

 here noticed. 



Olafsen speaks of a whale under the name of Hnufuhalcr (Fi'cnch 

 translation, iii. 22), which is said to have a smooth belly, and a horn 

 instead of a fin on the back ; but the account of the animals in this 

 work is evidently only a compilation, and this appears like an incor- 

 rect translation of Dudley. 



Dr. Bennett observes — " The Humpback of the southern whalers 

 derives its trivial name from an embossed appendage or hump 

 on the posterior part of the back. It has two spiracles or nostrils 

 on the summit of the head, and its mouth is furnished with 

 plates of short whalebone. Wlien seen on the surface of the water, 

 it bears a close resemblance to the Sperm WliaJc in colour and the 

 appearance of the hump, as well as in a habit it has of casting its 

 tail vertically in the air ; when about to dive, the hump slopes to- 

 wards the tail in a more oblique manner than does the similar 

 ajipendage in the Sperm Whale. 



" It is seldom molested by whalers, and is never a chief object of 

 their pursuit, although the oil it produces is superior to that from 

 the Right Whale (BaJama), and but little inferior to sperm oil. 



"It is a species (genus?) fre(iuently seen in the Atlantic and 

 Pacific Oceans, where it occivrs in small herds, and seldom at any 

 considerable distance from land, although the vicinity of the most 

 abriipt coast woidd ajjpear to be its favourite resort. Examples arc 

 occasionally seen in the neighbourhood of the islands of the Pacific, 

 and very frequently in the deep water around the island of St. Helena. 



