LIFE OF FLOWER 145 



the first of the two attention was concentrated on the 

 aberrant and rare form known as Berardius arnuxi ; 

 while the second was exclusively devoted to the much 

 more abundant types included under the generic title 

 Mesoplodon, in allusion to the single pair of lower teeth 

 near the middle of the sides of the lower jaw, which 

 forms the single dental armature of the cetaceans of this 

 genus. The beaked whales, it should be added, had 

 been previously discussed by Flower in a preliminary 

 paper published in the Zoological Society's Proceedings 

 for 1871 and 1876, and likewise in an article communi- 

 cated in 1872 to Nature. 



Special interest attaches to a paper by Flower pub- 

 lished in the Transactions of the Royal Geological 

 Society of Cornwall for 1872, and also in the Annals 

 and Magazine of Natural History for the same year, on 

 the bones of a whale dug up at Petuan, in Cornwall, 

 sometime previously to 1829, and now preserved in the 

 museum of the above-named Society. The whale re- 

 presented by these remains was made the type of the 

 new genus and species Eschrichtius robustus, by the late 

 Dr. J. E. Gray. That it was a member of the group 

 of whalebone- whales, and that it could not be identified 

 with either of the genera then known, namely Balana, 

 Bal&noptera, and Megaptera, was fully demonstrated by 

 Flower, who also showed that it agreed with the two 

 latter in having the neck- vertebrae free. 



"The interesting question," he added, "remains, 

 whether this species still exists in our seas ; if extinct, 

 it must have become so at a comparatively recent period, 

 certainly long after Cornwall was inhabited by man. 

 The negative evidence of no specimen having been met 

 K 



