•BALiENOPTEEA. 



41 



The low castes iu Sind, along the banks of the Indus, consider por- 

 poise flesh a delicacy, and Dr. Anderson says that the Gurhwals, and 

 some castes in the Jessore, Dacca and Burdwan districts, also in the 

 N. W. Provinces about Allahabad, Benares, and the Punjab, also eat it. 

 The oil is universally regarded as a valuable embrocation in rheumatism, 

 for strengthening the loins, and for pains in the lumbar region generally. 

 The illuminating powers of this oil. Dr. Andei'son says, are said to be 

 high. The fishermen in tSind use it on their boats for lighting, and 

 also as a lubricant. 



Family, BALtENOPTERID^.. 



Head enormous; spiracles double; belly smooth, with or without 

 longitudinal folds ; teeth none, but baleen piM3sent in the upper jaw ; 

 rostrum long, narrow, rounded; frontal bone flat^ expanded, broad over 

 the orbit. 



Balsenoptera, Lacep. — Characters same as those of the Family, but 

 with an adipose dorsal fin ; head one-fourth of total length or less ; skin 

 of the belly with longitudinal folds ; cranium slightly arched. 



Balaenoptera Indiea, Blyth, J. A. S. B. xsi., p. 358. 



Plate VI. 



Length. — 80 — 90 feet; lower jaw slender. There does not appear to 

 be any reliable information as to the general form of the Indian 

 Eorqual, although the animal is fairly common along the Western 

 Coast as well as the Sind and Mekran Coasts. Jerdon records a whale 

 supposed to be this species, 90 feet long and 42 feet in circumference, 

 thrown, ashore, on the Chittagong Coast. Another, he says, was 

 cast up dead on Amherst Islet, 84 feet iu length, of which the rami of 

 the lower jaw and a few other bones are in the Indian Museum at 

 Calcutta ; the length of each ramus is said to be 21 feet, and the radius 

 38" 75 inches. A skull, of which a plate is given, was cast up on the 

 Clifton beach, in 1879, and is now in the Kurracliee museum. It measures 

 17 feet 8 inches in length and 7 feet across the zygomatic arches. 



Between Kurrachee and Bombay and on the Mekran Coast this 

 species may be said to be fairly common. One was run over by the 

 B. I. S. N. Co.'s Steamer EupJirates, about 60 miles from Bombay, 

 nearly two years ago. The animal, it appears from the Captain's state- 

 ment, seemed to amuse itself by crossing and recrossing the bow, and 

 then at last siiddenly turned and came straight for the vessel, striking 

 it about 10 feet from the bow. The Government Steamer Dalhousie also 

 fell foul of one in September 1880, and another was found entangled 

 in the Submarine Cable on the Mekran Coast. Blyth, in an article on 

 the Indian Rorqual (/. A. S. B. 1859, p. 481,) mentions that whales 

 were known to, and recorded by, the ancients, and Nearchus, b. c, 327, 

 sailing to the Persian Gulf, mentions having met with them, and that 

 on the Mekran Coast the people built houses with the bones of 

 stranded whales. 



z6 



