THE AMERICAN MUSEUM JOURNAL 



their knives of bone of the whale. For himting whales and 

 walrus they use harpoons with flint points, and drags made of 

 whalebone and covered with seal-skin. 



The acquisition of this collection supijlements the Eskimo 

 collections of the Museum in a most desirable manner. With 

 our previous purchases and expeditions the culture of the Eskimo 

 of Smith Sound, of Bafifin Land, of the west coast of Hudson 

 Bay and of Alaska, was represented in the Museum. Captain 

 Comer's collection fills in the gap between the collections from 

 Hudson Bay and those from Baffin Land, and adds a link in the 

 long interval between Hudson Bay and Alaska, which is so diffi- 

 cult of access, and which is not represented in the Museum. 

 During the past year a collection was also received from the 

 Siberian Eskimo, made by Mr. Waldemar Bogoras while he was 

 engaged in researches for the Jesup North Pacific Expedition. 

 It remains now to obtain collections from the southern part of 

 West Greenland and from East Greenland, from Labrador, and 

 from the regions east of Mackenzie River, in order to represent 

 adequately the whole culture of the Eskimo tribes. 



THE MUSEUM'S FIN-BACK WHALE. 



N November 22 a report came that two whales, a 

 very large female and a small male, were stranded 

 on the beach near the Forked River Life-Saving 

 Station, Forked River, N. J. Messrs. Sherwood 

 and Figgins of the ^luseum were sent at once to 

 investigate the matter and to secure the skeletons and other 

 material of interest. The party found that the female was a 

 magnificent specimen measuring 67 feet 6 inches in length and 

 about .^o feet in circumference. The length of the lower jaw was 

 14 feet 7 inches, that of the pectoral fin was 3 feet, and the caudal 

 fin, or tail, was 12 feet 4 inches from tip to tip. There were 375 

 plates of baleen, or "whalebone," on each side of the upper jaw. 

 The skin of the ventral surface formed about eighty longitudinal 

 folds. The color was slatey blue on the back, and white with 



