Bibliographical Notices. 191 
mitted his materials to lithographers in Berlin, and was preparing to 
continue the work at his own cost, when the governor of the pro- 
- yince placed some funds at his disposal on condition that copies of 
the work should be distributed in the Republic, leaving the author 
free to issue his work in German and to dispose of it in Europe. 
Hence the progress of the book will depend largely upon the recep- 
tion it may meet with among naturalists in Europe and North 
America; and we can only trust that every encouragement may be 
extended to the author in his endeavour to carry out the great 
undertaking on which he is engaged. The part before us, which is 
complete in itself, comprises a description of the whalebone whales 
which visit the Argentine coast. This memoir consists of seven folio 
plates, which illustrate the external appearance of the Balenoptera 
mtermedia, and the osteology of this species, as well as that of the 
Balenoptera bonaérensis and the Balenoptera patachonica. These 
plates are beautifully drawn; some were prepared as far back as 1870. 
They form an important contribution to our knowledge of the species 
which they illustrate. There is a brief folio description of the 
plates in French, and a synoptical table of the length of the indi- 
vidual vertebrze and the number of vertebre in the several regions 
of the body in the three species figured. The text is in German, 
and consists of thirty-six pages quarto, which, between the intro- 
duction and conclusion, describes in detail the three species figured, 
and gives some notice of the Megaptera Burmeistert and of the Ba- 
lena australis. 
The introduction is a lively account of the author’s first studies in 
1825 of a fin-whale stranded on the island of Riigen ; and this leads 
up to a recital of the difficulties which surrounded him in South 
America in haying to make his studies on the sea-shore without the 
- aid of trained assistants, and to measure these animals and their 
organs in the presence of excited and shouting crowds ; but there is 
no need for apology on the author’s part that he should confine him- 
_ self on the present occasion chiefly to studies of the skeleton and of 
_ the external aspect of these whales; for although the species had 
been previously defined, it is only now that we are able to compare 
- them in detail with the well-known fin-whales of Europe and of 
the Japanese seas. 
The Balenoptera bonaérensis is given the first place in the de- 
scription. A male stranded in 1867 has already been described by 
_ the author in the ‘ Proceedings of the Zoological Society’ for that 
_ year, and, although in too advanced a stage of decomposition to 
_ permit near examination, was estimated to be 52 feet long, the head 
_ being 7 feet, the body and back 12 feet, and the tail 13 feet. 
_ Having given details of measurement and described the grey-white 
_ belly, the slaty-grey back, and the position of the genital organs 
_ relatively to the dorsal fin, he passes on to describe the baleen, which 
_ hadalready become detached from the head. The portion from one 
_ side which was recovered included only 192 plates out of a probable 
250 to 260. The smallest plate was 7 or 8 centim. long; the 
longest, which was the 150th, was 32 centim. long; and behind this 
_the plates again became shorter. 
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