CETACEA. 25 



This description is the origin of Bal&na nodosa of Bonnaterre 

 and other authors. The French authors have evidently not un- 

 derstood the word " reeves," and have therefore arranged these 

 with the smooth-bellied Unless whales, and Bonnaterre translates 

 the position of the fins on the sides into " presque au milieu du 

 corps." Dudley, when speaking of the Spermaceti Whale, says, 

 " he has a bunch on his back like a Hump-back," which explains 

 what he means by a bunch. 



The Hump-backs are well known to the whalers, for Beale 

 says, " The Hump-back Whale possesses, like the Greenland 

 Whale, the baleen, and spouts from the top of the head, yet has 

 a hump not very dissimilar to that of the Sperm Whale," p. 12. 



Professor Eschricht, in the Danish Transactions) 1846, t. , 

 has figured the dorsal fin of this genus, and shows that it is 

 more properly a bunch, as Dudley calls it, than a fin. 



Cuvier (Oss. Foss. v. 367) thinks that the Hump-back Whale 

 was probably only a whale of another kind whose fins had been 

 injured, not recognizing in his Cape Rorqual the genus of Whale 

 here noticed. 



Olafsen speaks of a whale under the name of HnufubaJcr 

 (French translation, iii. 22), which is said to have a smooth belly, 

 and a horn instead of a fin on the back ; but the account of the 

 animals in this work is evidently only a compilation, and this ap- 

 pears like an incorrect translation of Dudley. 



" The Hump-back of the Southern whalers derives its trivial 

 name from an embossed appendage or hump on the posterior part 

 of the back. It has two spiracles or nostrils on the summit of 

 the head, and its mouth is furnished with plates of short whale- 

 bone. When seen on the surface of the water it bears a close 

 resemblance to the Sperm Whale in colour and the appearance of 

 the hump, as well as in a habit it has of casting its tail vertically 

 in the air ; when about to dive, the hump slopes towards the tail 

 in a more oblique manner than does the similar appendage in 

 the Sperm Whale. 



" It is seldom molested by whalers, and is never a chief object of 

 their pursuit, although the oil it produces is superior to that from 

 the Right Whale (Bal&na), and but little inferior to sperm oil. 



" It is a species (genus?) frequently seen in the Atlantic and 

 Pacific Oceans, where it occurs in small herds, and seldom at any 

 considerable distance from land, although the vicinity of the most 

 abrupt coast would appear to be its favourite resort. Examples 

 are occasionally seen in the neighbourhood of the islands of the 

 Pacific, and very frequently in the deep water around the island of 

 St. Helena. The highest 'south latitude in which we noticed the 

 species (genus) was 4.9 ; the highest north latitude 40, on the 

 western side of the continent of America. Most abundant off the 



