hight-Whales. 15 
To the western wall of the building are affixed several blades 
of the whalebone of the Greenland Right-Whale obtained from 
the Greenland Seas, and described and figured in Dr. J. E. Gray’s 
“ Zoology of the ‘ Erebus’ and ‘ Terror’” (1846). The specimens 
were presented to the Museum by Messrs. Smith and Simmonds. 
The North Atlantic Black Right-Whale (Balena glacialis, or 
B. biscayensis), the Nordkaper of the Dutch, the Sarde of the 
Icelandic, and the Sletbag of the old French whalers, is, as already 
mentioned, closely allied to, if not specifically identical with, the 
Black, or Southern, Right-Whale. The northern limit of the range 
of this Whale is almost exactly conterminous with the southern 
limit of that of the Greenland Right-Whale. The North Atlantic, 
or Biscay, Right-Whale (fig. 3) has a much smaller head and more 
arched lower jaw than the Greenland species; while the surface 
of the upper jaw is roughened, and often has a horny hump known 
as the “bonnet.” It is further characterised by the frequent 
presence upon its skin of parasitic barnacles (Coronula), which are 
never found on the Greenland Whale. This Whale is represented 
in the Gallery by the complete skeleton, upon which a half-model 
is built, of an adult male, forty-nine feet in length, taken off the 
north-west coast of Iceland in the summer of 1891; and also by a 
miniature model of the entire animal presented by the American 
Museum of Natural History in 1908. The wholly black colour of 
the skin should be noticed. 
In a table-case near by are exhibited two specimens of the 
above-mentioned horny excrescence from the fore part of the head 
of the North Pacific Black Right-Whale, termed by whalers the 
“Pponnet.” Such horny growths appear to be commonly developed 
in all the Black Whales ; and are tenanted by numbers of parasitic 
crustaceans. The larger of the two specimens was obtained from 
the North Pacific, and presented by Mr. E. W. H. Holdsworth in 
1864. There is likewise a small specimen of the “bonnet ”’ 
of the Southern Black Right-Whale (Balena australis), from 
the Sandwich Islands, also presented by Mr. Holdsworth in 
1864. 
To emphasize the fact that in the genus Balena the neck is 
very short, and the seven vertebra are all welded together, there 
is exhibited a set of the seven cervical vertebre of the North 
Atlantic Black Right-Whale. This specimen was dredged off 
Bridport, Dorsetshire, and presented by the Rev. H. Beecham in 
1853. 
