called “ SteypireySr”’ by the Icelanders. 327 
latter were really identical with one of them, it could hardly be 
said with which, as long as we had only the description com- 
municated above to go by. ‘To this it must be added that, in 
spite of the perfect resemblance as to colour, it can at most be 
probable, but far from certain, that the “ Steypireydr”’ is 
really identical with either of the above-mentioned whales, 
if two cetaceans can exist which, with a striking resemblance 
in colour, combine such essential differences in their osteology 
that they must not only be considered as different species, but 
must even be referred to different sections of the great genus 
Balenoptera,—one, the 'Tunnolik,” or Ostend whale, to the see- 
tion of which Dr. J. E. Gray has made his genus Stbbaldius*, 
the other, Balenoptera Caroline, to the genus Physalus. There 
* In a recently published essay on two subfossil whales discovered in 
Sweden (Upsala, 1867), my excellent friend Prof. Lilljeborg has esta- 
blished a new genus (Flowerius) for the Ostend Whale. Among the 
characteristics, however, pointed out, the one taken from the position of 
the dorsal fin is not very well chosen ; for when, in the generic character, 
he writes of the place of this fin as ‘somewhat in front of the posterior 
fifth of the entire body’s length,” this statement may indeed be tolerably 
correct (provided the measurements given are accurate) as far as the 
“'Tunnolik” stranded at Godhavn (the identity of which with the Ostend 
whale is by no means proved) is concerned; but it cannot be applied to 
the specimen which is considered the type of the genus. Nor do I believe 
that it can be regarded as a certain characteristic, that the atlas “has 
the lateral processes above the middle and of a conical form,” while these 
processes are “compressed and situated in about the middle of the sides” 
in Stbbaldius. As detailed descriptions of the atlas of the Ostend whale 
do not exist, and as Lilljeborg has not seen the bone himself, he can 
only have taken this character from Dubar’s figure of the vertebra 
in his ‘Ostéographie’ of the said whale; but these figures are too rough 
to be trusted in this way, more especially as, in the figure of the 
atlas, the transverse processes are not even represented alike on both 
sides. Perhaps the left one may arise in the way stated by Lillje- 
borg; but the right one seems to arise as in Stbbaldius, and I do not 
see how it may safely be inferred from the drawing whether they are 
conical or compressed. Finally, it is scarcely correct, in the generic 
diagnosis, to indicate as a character for Flowerius that only the second 
cervical vertebra has annular transverse processes: Dubar, indeed, 
says so; but it has escaped Lilljeborg that it is stated expressly by Van 
der Linden, whose essay on the Ostend whale was published later than 
Dubar’s, and is evidently a more trustworthy work, that the third cervical 
vertebra is provided with annular transverse processes as well as the 
second. Thus the differences between the genera Plowerius and Stbbaldius 
are not even so great as imagined by Lilljeborg, though, if they were, 
they would not, in my opinion, be sufficient to justify the establishment 
of anew genus. But, however this may be, there is no need of the name 
Flowerius; for Gray has already, in his ‘Catalogue of Seals and Whales 
in the British Museum’ (published in 1866) subdivided his genus Svbbal- 
dius into two sections, which he does not, indeed, call genera, but of which 
the one constituted for Sebbaldius laticeps has a special name, Rudolphius. 
If accordingly the genus Stbbaldius must be broken up into two, I suppose 
Rudolphius must be adopted for the genus in which the S, /aticeps is to 
