334 Prof. J. Reinhardt on the Fin- Whale 
added for comparison, and also the measurements of the skull 
of a large Balenoptera antiquorum in the zoological garden at 
Antwerp—both taken from a table communicated by the 
above-mentioned English cetologist in his valuable ‘‘ Notes 
on the Skeletons of Whales’”’*. The little discrepancies which 
may be found in some few relative dimensions can hardly have 
any importance when we consider that the skull of whales 
changes considerably during growth, and that the Icelandic 
cranium is not very far from being twice as large as the one 
described by Flower. 
To this almost perfect resemblance in the skull we must fur- 
ther add a correspondence in the colour of the baleen, which is 
uniformly black in the Icelandic whale, as is also that of the 
Balenoptera Sibbaldit, and, finally, according to the statement 
of Capt. Bottemann, a correspondence as to the number of the 
vertebra, so much the more important as sixty-four vertebree 1s 
the greatest number yet met with in any fin-whalef, and is 
only found in the above-mentioned speciest. Accordingly I 
do not hesitate to refer the “ Steypireyér”’ of the Icelanders to 
Balenoptera Sibbaldit; and as we hitherto have only known 
the skeleton of half-grown specimens of this whale, the know- 
ledge of it has been not a little promoted by the information 
now procured. 
This result established, we have still to find out what the 
relation of this species is to the two other fin-whales, to which 
it bears such a striking resemblance in colour that it seems 
impossible to point out any essential difference, viz. the spe- 
cies recently described under the name of Balenoptera Caro- 
line, and the “'Tunnolik” of the Greenlanders, usually con- 
sidered identical with the Ostend whale. 
As to its relation to Balenoptera Caroline, I see, from a 
short notice in the English periodical the ‘ Atheneeum’ (1868, 
No. 2108, p. 427), that Mr. W. H. Flower, at the meeting of 
* Proc. Zool. Soc. of London, Noy. 8, 1864, p. 411. 
+ In the essay of Eschricht and myself on the Greenland whale (in the 
K. D. Vid. Selsk. Sky. ser. 5. vol. v.) the number of the vertebree in B. an- 
tiquorum (B. musculus), p. 549, is, by a misprint, stated to be 63; and the 
same error appears also in the English translation of the same essay in 
the ‘‘ Recent Memoirs on the Cetacea,” edited by W. H. Flower for the 
Ray Society (p. 105). I consider it my duty to correct this error, so much 
the more as I perceive with regret that others have been led astray by it. 
The Balenoptera antiquorum has regularly only 61 vertebrae, and that is 
also the number found in the skeleton alluded to by Eschricht and myself 
in the treatise quoted above. 
¢ One of the two skeletons on which this species has been founded is 
known to have sixteen pairs of ribs, the other fifteen. As Mr. Bottemann 
only found fifteen in the foetus dissected by him, it is probable, though by 
no means certain, that the latter number is the normal one. 
