THE WHALEBONE WHALES OF THE WEST- 
BN NORGE AMEAN TIC “COMPARED 
Wie THOSE GCCURRING IN -EURO- 
PEN ww AER S Wit SOME, OBSER- 
Web KO NS. ON, wets SPE Cis “Or. “VEL: 
NORM PACTE IC: 
By Freperick W. TRUE, 
HEAD CURATOR, DEPARTMENT OF BIOLOGY, U. S. NATIONAL MUSEUM. 
INTRODUCTION. 
Several years ago I began a study of the species of whalebone whales which 
frequent the western North Atlantic, with a view of ascertaining the facts regarding 
their distribution and migrations. I was confronted at once by the uncertainty 
in the nomenclature of the species frequenting European waters, with which the 
American forms were known to be closely allied, and my first undertaking was to 
ascertain the identity of the species described by Linnzus in the tenth edition of 
the Systema Nature. The results of this search for correct scientific names were 
published in 1898." 
Having fixed the names of the European species as far as possible, I next 
endeavored to locate the material on which the American species described by 
Cope and other cetologists had been based, and began a comparison of these types 
and of such other material as existed in the National Museum and other similar 
establishments in the United States with the European forms. For a considerable 
time I was so situated as to be unable to work on specimens, and during this 
period I collected from every available source records of the occurrence of whale- 
bone whales on the Atlantic coast of North America, beginning with the very 
1Qn the nomenclature of the whalebone whales of the tenth edition of Linnzus’s Systema 
Nature. Proc. U.S. Nat. Mus., 21, 1898, pp. 617-635, No. 1163. 
1 
