LITTLE PIKED WHALE. 261 



sometimes admit, on viewing a stranded specimen, that "there is something strange about 

 her at that" (to a whaleman a whale is always "she" or "her"). 



The Greenland Eskimos call it 'TikaguUk,' and curiously, the Alaskan Eskimos have a 

 nearly identical term, 'Tschikagulik' for the representative of the species in Bering Strait 

 (van Beneden, 1887). 



Description. 



Form. — In general the outline of the body resembles that of the Finback, but the posterior 

 portion is less attenuated, and the form is somewhat stouter. The snout and jaws are rather 

 sharply pointed, though not excessively so. The dorsal fin is prominent, high and falcate. 

 The caudal fin is like that of the other members of the genus. 



The eye is exactly over the angle of the mouth. From the angle runs a groove or gutter, 

 which is continued a short distance behind the eye and ends indefinitely. The ear is a small 

 opening the size of a pin head between the eye and the pectoral. 



Plicae. — The throat folds in a Provincetown specimen I examined in 1910, were, counting 

 from the mid-line to the pectoral, twenty-six, or about fifty-two from side to side. Mr. J. Henry 

 Blake noted fifty in a Provincetown specimen. 



Color. — A Provincetown specimen which I examined in a fairly fresh condition, about 

 two days after its death, was a beautiful blue gray on the parts of the back which had not been 

 exposed to the sun. This color covered the sides and entire upper parts, and extended forward 

 on to the border of the lower lip and below the pectoral as far as the fifth plication. The entire 

 throat and the belly below these points were ivory white over an area that narrowed towards 

 the tail but included the ventral part of the caudal peduncle or ' small ' and all but the posterior 

 fourth of the under side of the flukes. Here the color changed to grayish and then black, 

 forming a dark border to this member. In life the white ventral area has a distinct pinkish 

 tinge, but this is evanescent, and quickly disappears after death. It is represented in Bocourt's 

 figure (Gervais, 1871, pi. 3) of a specimen stranded on the French coast. A very characteristic 

 marking of this whale is the broad white band across the pectoral limb. In the specimen here 

 described, the base of the pectoral was colored dark blue gray like the back, but at a distance 

 of 50 millimeters from the body, this color ended abruptly with a sharply defined limit, and 

 gave place to a clear white band across the entire breadth of the limb. This band extended 

 on the upper surface for some 260 millimeters, then became clouded and shaded into the black- 

 ish tip, which therefore comprised nearly the terminal half of the pectoral. The under surface 

 of the limb hardly differed in pattern and color. Turner (1892, p. 49) records that in a 

 specimen from Granton, British Isles, there were black blotches on the white area of the Umb, 

 but this is unusual apparently. The tongue is light yellow. 



Hair. — The number of bristles on the snout appears to be greatly reduced in this whale 



