REPORT ON THE CETACEA. 31 



that it formed a genus distiuct from Megaptera, and named the animal Poescoina 

 lalandii. Its generic diflference is not, however, accepted by zoologists generally, and 

 MM. Van Beneden and Gervais associate it with the genus Megaptera as species 

 lalandii ; ^ at the same time they point out that the differences between its skeleton and 

 that of Megaptera longimana are not of a strongly-marked character. 



In 1864 Dr J. E. Gray received from New Zealand some ear-bones, which though 

 very like those of Megap>tera longimana, yet had the tympanies shorter and more swollen. 

 He accordingly proposed to distinguish the animal from which they had been obtained as 

 a new species by the name of Megaptera novce-zealandice.'^ 



MM. Van Beneden and Gervais hesitate to accept the New Zealand Megaptera as a 

 distinct species from that of the Cape, and Dr Hector, who at first adopted Dr Gray's 

 nomenclature, has in his latest memoir On the New Zealand Cetacea" regarded it as 

 Megaptera lalandii. He states that the humpback is the most common whale around the 

 coasts of New Zealand. 



The cervical vertebrae in this specimen do not, however, entirely correspond with the 

 vertebrse of Megap)tera lalandi descril^ed by MM. Van Beneden and Gervais. In their 

 specimen it is stated that all the cervical vertelDrse were free, but that Cuvier had 

 described the second and third as united by the upper part of the l)ody, and that in the 

 British Museum was a specimen in which the second was united to the third on one side 

 only. In fig. 2, PI. IX., the junction of the second and third with each other is represented 

 by thena, and in the same figure it can be seen that not only are the superior and inferior 

 transverse processes of the cervical vertebrse behind the second not united together exter- 

 nally, but that those of the axis also are free at their outer ends. From this circumstance, 

 as well as from the union of only two vertebrse with each other in the specimens above 

 referred to, there can, I think, be httle doubt that the specimen now described was of 

 more mature age than those previously recorded. 



In October 1870 a cargo of whales' bones was imported into Leith from the Cape of 

 Good Hope. Messrs J. & J. Cunningham, the importers, kindly allowed me to examine 

 them, and select some specimens for the Anatomical Museum of the University. The 

 collection contained numerous bones of the Cape Humpback, and I had no difiiculty 

 in picking out several specimens of the atlas-vertebra of this animal. I have compared 

 the atlas of the New Zealand animal with one of those from the Cape, and except that 

 the furrow between two anterior articular surfaces for the occipital bone is somewhat 

 broader and deeper in the Cape specimen, there is no appreciable difi'erence between 

 them. It should be stated that the atlas from the Cape is a somewhat larger bone than 

 that from New Zealand. 



' Ostdograpliie des Cetac^s, p. 130. 



= Proc. Zool. Soc, 1864, p. 208, and Catalogue of Seals and Whales, p. 128. 



^ Trans. New Zealand Institute, vol. x. p. 335, 1878. 



