FIXED MESSMATES. 57 



tlie ice, carries no cirrliipcdes. This fact was already 

 known to Iceland fjsbermen of the twelfth century. The 

 intrepid whalers of these regions used to distinguish a 

 northern w^hale, without "calcareous plates," from a 

 southern whale with plates, that is to say, with cirrhi- 

 pedes. This latter whale is the celebrated species of 

 temperate regions, the Nord-Kaper which the Basques 

 used to hunt, fi'om the sixth century, in the Channel, 

 and which they used afterwards to pursue even to New- 

 foundland. The whales of the southern hemisphere, 

 like those of the Pacific Ocean, all have their own 

 species of cirrhipedes. We found in the museum of the 

 Zoological Garden at Amsterdam, a Coronula, brought 

 from Japan by Mr. Blomhof, known under the name of 

 Coronidas regime, which, no doubt, characterizes the 

 whale of those latitudes. Another northern whale, the 

 Kcporlcak of the Greenlanders, very remarkable for its 

 long fins, which give it the name of Megaptcra, is 

 covered very early in its life with these crustaceans, so • 

 much so, that the Greenlanders imagine that they are 

 born with them. Some even have pretended to have 

 seen Megapterse covered with these coronulaB before 

 their birth. Eschricht has in vain offered a reward to 

 him who would send him coronulse still attached to the 

 umbilical cord ; he has only received some pieces of skin 

 covered with hairy bulbs. There. is no doubt that young 

 whales have been seen and captured while following their 

 mother, which were already covered by these crustaceans. 



Steenstrup has indicated the presence of Platycyamus 

 Thompsoni on the body of the Hyperoodons, and the Xeno- 

 balanus glohicijntis on the globiceps of the Shetland Isles. 



The Cri/ptolcpas is a new genus of Coronulidae which 



