called “ Steypireydr” by the Icelanders. 325 
colour becomes a little lighter, and that part of the belly which 
is behind the furrows is uniformly grey ; in the anterior plaited 
region the ridges are blackish grey, but the furrows between 
them light grey. The caudal fin is blackish grey on both 
sides, in some individuals also marked with lighter spots in 
the dark ground-colour. Finally, the distribution of the co- 
lours on the pectoral fins is very characteristic: their external 
surface is blackish grey, sometimes spotted with somewhat 
lighter specks; the inside, on the contrary, is perfectly milk- 
white, forming a contrast the more striking, as no other part of 
the body is of this colour; only just at the base of the fin the 
white colour changes into a greyish white. Mr. Hallas also 
found in most individuals some small white linear spots irre- 
gularly scattered about the belly; they vary in number and 
are most probably, as he conjectures, only scars. Leaving 
these out of consideration, the distribution of the colours is 
evidently very constant in this species of fin-whale. The only 
variations which seem to occur are the grey stains that some- 
times appear in the darkest-coloured parts of the body, as also 
in a few cases somewhat darker spots may be found on the 
grey belly; but these variations are evidently far too small to 
have any essential effect on the general appearance of the 
whale. The whalebone seems always to be uniformly black. 
Mr. Hallas’s notes contain little more than the description 
of the colour and some measurements. But the latter show 
that the “‘ Steypireydr”’ is one of the largest of the fin-whales, 
The length of the largest of the six specimens measured is 
stated to have been 80 Danish feet; the smallest was as much 
as 70 feet; and though, no doubt, some few feet must be sub- 
tracted from each of these figures, Mr. Hallas having measured 
the distance between the tip of the beak and the notch in the 
tail not in a straight line, but along the curvature of the back, 
yet, on the other hand, none of these whales appear to have 
been quite full-grown, as the coalescence of the epiphyses 
with the bodies of the vertebre, Mr. Hallas informs me, 
was not completed in any of them. It would also appear 
that the Icelanders are right in supposing that the form of the 
dorsal fin is a characteristic of this whale, though perhaps they 
do not give the peculiarities of the fin with perfect correctness 
when they say that one of the two kinds of large fin-whales 
distinguished by them has a shorter as well as a lower dorsal 
fin than the other; for the dorsal fin of the “ Steypirey®r” 
seems not to be particularly short; but it is remarkably low, 
so that its height is contained three times and a half in its 
length. It was not, in any of the individuals in which it was 
measured by Mr. Hallas, more than 7 inches high, So incon- 
