4 CETACEA. 35 
_ This description is the origin of Balena nodosa of Bonnaterre 
ad other authors. The French authors have evidently not un- 
tood the word “reeves,” and have therefore arranged these 
with the smooth-bellied finless whales, and Bonnaterre translates 
the of the fins on the sides into “ presque au milieu du 
| corps .’ Dudley, when speaking of the Spermaceti Whale, says, 
he has a bunch on his back like a Hump-back,” which explains 
what he means by a bunch. 
_ The Hump- -backs are well known to the whalers, for Beale 
‘says, “ The Hump-back 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, 1846, t. —, 
has figured the dorsal fin of this genus, and shows that it is 
‘more properly a bunch, as Dudley calls it, than a fin. 
Cuvier (Oss. Foss. v. 367) thinks that the Hump-back Whale 
was probably only a whale of another kind whose fins had been 
injured, not recognizing in his Cape Rorqual the genus of Whale 
here noticed. 
_ Olafsen speaks of a whale under the name of Hnufubakr 
(French translation, ii. 22), which is said to have a smooth belly, 
and a horn instead of a fin on the back; but the account of the 
eunals in this work is evidently only a compilation, and this ap- 
s like an incorrect translation of Dudley. 
“The Hump-back 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 whale- 
bone. When-seen on the surface of the water it bears a close 
resemblance to the Sperm Whale in colour and the appearance of 
the hump, as well as in a habit it has of casting its tail vertically 
‘m the air; when about to dive, the hump slopes towards the tail 
‘im a more oblique manner than does the similar appendage in 
the Sperm Whale. 
os Tt 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 (Balena), and but little mferior to sperm oil. 
“Tis a species (genus?) frequently seen in the Atlantic and » 
Pacific Oceans, where it occurs im small herds, and seldom at any 
eonsiderable distance from land, although the vicinity of the most 
abrupt coast would appear to be its favourite resort. Examples 
are occasionally seen in the neighbourhood of the islands of the 
Pacific, and very frequently in the deep water around the island of 
St. Helena. The highest south latitude in which we noticed the 
"Species (genus) was 49°; the highest north latitude 40°, on the 
; _ western side of the continent of America. Most abundant off the 
‘alle B 
io 
ie 
