266 THE WHALEBONE WHALES OF THE WESTERN NORTH ATLANTIC. 
Cape of Good Hope. These different whales have for common characters a 
very small head, a bifid first rib, the lower ends of the ribs very thick and almost 
round. 
“The Sarde of the Newfoundland banks, and the Balena cisarctica of the 
coast of North America, belong to a different group, very near to the Balena aus- 
tralis of the Cape of Good Hope, and the . antipodum of New Zealand. The 
head is comparatively longer than in Hunterius ; the first rib is simple; the lower 
extremities of the ribs are compressed. 
“ There exist then in our temperate regions of the Atlantic at least two species 
of Right whales.” 
In 1881, Fischer again raised the question of the number of species of Right 
whales in the North Atlantic (44, 33-55), but by this time had somewhat modified 
his views. He reviews the literature of the subject, ancient and modern, and devotes 
two pages to conclusions. These are in brief as follows: 
1. That “it may be considered very probable that (a) the ‘ Nordecaper,’ (/) the 
‘Sletbag, (¢) Balena tarentina of Capellini, and (d) Balena biscayensis belong 
to the same species, as well as the fossil species b. lamanoni, glacialis, and 
svedenborgi.” 
2. That “the ‘Sarde’ and B. czsarctica of Cope are synonyms and (awaiting 
fuller information) distinct—at least as a race—from the whale of the Basques, by the 
longer head. The skeleton is otherwise similar.” 
3. That Halibalena britannica, B. vanbenedeniana, and B. mediterranea 
“have not sufficient characters to be classified,” and can be as well associated with 
the Nordcaper as with L. mysticetus. 
Fischer adds the following: “A species, among cetaceans, is perhaps what we 
call a genus; and in that case, the Nordkaper would be a single one, with two or 
three races, with distinct geographical distribution.” 
The second of the foregoing opinions is that which is of most interest in the 
present connection. On page 41, Fischer makes the remarkable statement, already 
mentioned elsewhere (see p. 13), that armed with the compass and “ balestrille” the 
Basques roamed westward in the Atlantic and in 1372 discovered the banks of 
Newfoundland, where they saw whales in abundance. This statement appears to 
rest on a memoir prepared by the merchants of St. Jean de Luz and Cibourre 
in 1710, and published in 1857.". The whale which they first found here, accord- 
ing to Fischer, they considered different from the whale of the Bay of Biscay, 
and called Sardaco Baleac, or the whale which goes in herds or schools, in con- 
tradistinction to the former, which appears singly. Continuing their explorations, 
they entered the Gulf of St. Lawrence where they found still another and better 
whale which they called Grand Bayaco Baleac or Grand Bay whale. They after- 
wards recognized this as the same as the Greenland whale, B. mysticetus, found 
at Spitzbergen. 
The character of the evidence on which these statements rest is unknown to 
*“ Mémoire addressé en 1710 4 M. de Planthion, syndic général du pays de Labourd, par les 
négociants de Saint-Jean-de-Luz et de Cibourre.” (Journal Za Gironde, 29 Avril, 1857.) 
