called “ SteypireySr” by the Icelanders. 335 
the Zoological Society of London on the 12th of March, com- 
municated some remarks on Mr. Malm’s new species, suggest- 
ing that the latter would most probably prove identical with 
Balenoptera Sibbaldit. think this supposition to be highly 
probable; and to the reasons for it (which, I suppose*, Flower 
has taken from resemblances of the skeletons) we must now also 
add the remarkable correspondence in colour, the peculiar low 
dorsal fin, and, finally, the backward position of this fin, just 
before the posterior fourth of the animal. Yet I must confess 
that Ihave not succeeded, by the assistance of Mr. Malm’s de- 
scription and measurements of the skull, in entirely convincing 
myself that the latter has the same broad beak by which the 
Bb. Stibbaldii is at once distinguished ; and it is to be regretted 
that Malm has given no figure of the cranium that might 
assist his description, and which I am sure most zoologists, 
if they had been allowed to choose, would have much pre- 
ferred to several of the illustrations (of rather doubtful scien- 
tific value) with which his work is so abundantly provided. 
Nor must it be overlooked that Malm, who has had an oppor- 
tunity of comparing in detail his own whale with a skeleton 
of B. antiquorum, and who in general is very minute in point- 
ing out the various more or less weighty reasons which have 
induced him to consider it a species different from the latter, does 
not make one word of allusion to any difference in the form of 
the cranium; and yet it would be thought that if the skull of 
his whale had resembled the illustration here given (fig. 2), 
such a peculiar form could not have quite escaped his at- 
tention. But we know, on the other hand, that even the 
two specimens of Balenoptera Sibbaldit on which the spe- 
cies is founded differ somewhat from each other as to the 
breadth of the beak, and it appears that in Balenoptera anti- 
quorum, too, the breadth of this part varies in the different 
specimens}. Thus it may be that the diagnostic character 
afforded by the beak has not been so strongly developed in 
Malm’s whale as in the Icelandic cranium, and so might the 
more easily have been left unnoticed ; and though I have not 
ventured to suppress this little difficulty which may possibly 
still be found in Flower’s view of the matter, yet his supposition 
is, after all, much more probable than that two species of fin- 
whales resembling each other so closely in most respects, and 
yet specifically distinct, should exist in the northern seas. 
* T regret that I have not yet had an opportunity of becoming acquainted 
with Mr. Flower’s paper itself. 
+ Mr. Flower states that in six crania of Balenoptera antiquorum the 
proportion of the breadth across the middle of the beak to the length of 
the skull was found to vary between 18 and 21 to 100, (See Proc. Zool. 
Soe. of London, 1865, p. 473.) 
