162 BAL^ENOPTERA INDICA. 



last the rami of the lower jaw and a few other bones are now in the 

 Museum Asiatic Society, Calcutta,, and on these remains Blyth founded 

 this species. The length of each ramus is close on 21 feet. It tapers 

 very gradually and evenly, and is remarkably slender for a Balcenoptera. 

 The radius is 38| inches long. 



Very large whales, most probably of this species, have been stranded 

 near Kurachee j on the Malabar coast (one of which was said to be 100 

 feet long ; and another 90 feet, which got among the reefs off Quilon in 

 Travancore) ; also on Ceylon, and they are often captured off that island. 

 The Maldives and Seychelles are the head-quarters of the whalers who 

 seek these whales, but they are not so much sought after as the right- 

 whales (JBalcena), which yield much more blubber. Balcenoptera boops, 

 L., is the great Rorqual, and B. musculus, L., the Lesser Rorqual, are 

 both found in European seas. 



The true Balcence have a still larger head, about one-third the length 

 of the whole body ? and have no dorsal fin. They are all from arctic 

 or antarctic seas. Balcena mysticetus, the Greenland whale, is the best 

 known. It seldom attains 70 feet in length, and B. japonica is the only 

 other one from Northern Seas, but there are at least two from the South, 

 B. australis and B. antarctica. 



