42 REPORT OF NEW JERSEY STATE MUSEUM. 
Genus BaL,aina Linnzus. 
Right Whales, 
Balaena glacialis Bonaterre. 
Black Whale. 
PLATE 2, 
Head enormous, equal to one-third of the total length; highly 
arched above the level of the back; mouth cavity large and whale- 
bone very long. Bones of the neck always fused together. Color 
black, sometimes slightly varied with white below. Length 50 
to 60 feet. 
This whale variously known as the Black Whale, Atlantic 
Right Whale and Nordcaper is distributed all over the North 
Atlantic, and was one of the species much hunted by whalers of 
the north. It was undoubtedly much more common on the New 
Jersey coast in former years than it is to-day. Several speci- 
mens have been recorded on our coasts. In George Ord’s Amer- 
ican Zoology, Guthrie’s Geography, 1815, p. 292, he says: “A 
young whale of this species was taken in the Delaware in the 
vicinity of the Falls (7. e., Trenton) in the latter part of the 
year 1814, and exhibited at Philadelphia.”” Another one came 
up the river in 1862 and was captured opposite Philadelphia. It 
was presented to the Academy of Natural Sciences of that city 
by Mr. George Davidson, and its skeleton may still be seen in the 
Museum. It measured 37 feet in length. Still another was 
captured off the New Jersey coast by a crew of experienced Egg 
Harbor Whalers in the spring of 1882 and was brought to New 
York City where it was exhibited for several weeks. 
A skeleton in the Rutger’s College Museum is said by Mr. 
Rhoads to be of this species, probably the one whose capture 
is described in an article in the New York Sun, reprinted in For- 
est and Stream, July 4th, 1874, p. 267. It came up the Raritan 
nearly to South Amboy, where it was “shot with a rifle, hacked 
with an axe, and at last killed with a harpoon!’ 
