246 



ALLEN: NEW ENGLAND WHALEBONE WHALES. 



vertical height according to True (1904, p. 175). The iris was brown and the pupil "oblong 

 with a straight superior margin." 



The mammae are two in number as in other whales, concealed each in a longitudinal slit 



Text-figs. 8, 9. — Outlines of pectoral limbs of Blue Whales {Balaenoplera tmiscultis) showing emarginations between 

 the fingers. 



8. — From a foetal specimen (original). 



9. — From a photograph of an adult at Placentia Bay, Newfoundland (original). 



opposite the vaginal opening. Rudimentary mammae are present in the male. The penis 

 is retractile within the body, some six feet in length. 



Plicae. — The plicae or ridges and furrows of the ventral side, extend from the lower 

 margin of the lips to the navel as in the Common Finback. Side branches come off irregularly, 

 uniting adjacent ridges, and towards the posterior part of the thorax they run together, so that 

 the number is much reduced there as compared with that on a line between the forelimbs. 

 True found a variation of from 58 to 88 ridges between the roots of the pectorals in Newfound- 

 land specimens, and this is apparently not correlated with size or sex. 



Color. — The general coloration is a slaty-gray, with a decidedly bluish cast, darker on 

 the head, lips, and throat, paler along the sides. The shoulders, back, and sides are irregularly 

 mottled with small grayish patches. Millais describes a freshly killed specimen as "pale blue 

 gray." The belly, including the area of the throat folds and thence posteriorly to the navel, 

 has small scattered white marks of irregular shape, some larger, some smaller, but rather sharply 

 outlined. These are usually most abundant at the lower part of the throat. In some speci- 

 mens the white flecks extend forward even to the lips, but usually there are but few in front 

 of the pectoral fins. True observed a few cases in which they were so numerous under the root 

 of the pectoral as to form a large white band extending backward toward the navel; in others 

 they are confined to the posterior portion of the ventral folds, in the middle. There is great 

 individual variation in these details. The dorsal fin is likewise more or less marked with 



