SEALS AND WHALES OF THE BRITLSH SEAS. 75 



the moment of respiration, the water is thus dashed aside by the blast, and, 

 probably, some of it really carried up into the air, thus heightening the 

 deceptive effect. 



This species, when adult, reaches the length of about 70 feet, the upper 

 part is black, the throat and belly white and plaited, the flippers black. The 

 baleen is short and slate colour, veined with streaks of darker shade, but 

 growing lighter towards the inner edge. 



Dead Whales, when stranded on the shore, after floating long at sea, are 

 generally greatly distended with gas, which generates rapidly in the tissues 

 after decomposition has set in ; in such an inflated condition only a very 

 imperfect conception can be formed of the true proportions of the vast beast. 

 There is frequently, also, a great protrusion of membrane from the mouth, 

 arising from the same cause, and other appearances in the male animal, due 

 to the pressure of gas in the abdominal cavity are generally faithfully por- 

 trayed in old books of Natural History. 



A Whale of this species, taken off the North coast of Scotland, in April, 

 1880, was purchased by an enterprising individual in Birmingham, to which 

 town it was conveyed by rail, and there exhibited : probably, this was the 

 greatest distance from the sea at which an entire Cetacean, 6^, feet in length, 

 had ever been seen. 



The figure of this species is copied, by kind permission of Professor Flower, 

 from the illustration to his paper in the * Proceedings of the Zoological Society 

 of London ' for 1 869, p. 604, et. scq. 



SIBBALD S RORQUAL. 



Sibbald's Rorqual {Bal(Bnoptera sibbaldii, J. E. Gray; also Sibbaldins 

 borcalis, Gray, and PJiysalis latirostris, Flower), has several times been met with 



