240 



CETACEA 



of the United States several Whales of this species have been taken 

 within the last few years. In the North Pacific a very similar if 

 not identical species is regularly Imnted by the Japanese, who tow 

 the carcases ashore for the purposes of flensing and extracting 

 the whalebone. In the tropical seas, however, according to Captain 

 .Maury's whale charts, Right Whales are never or rarely seen ; but 

 the southern temperate ocean, especially the neighbourhood of the 

 Cape of Good Hope, Kerguelen's Island, Australia, and New Zea- 

 land, is inhabited by "Black Whales," once abundant, but now 

 nearly exterminated through the wanton destruction of the females 

 as they visit the bays and inlets round the coast, their constant 

 habit in the breeding time. The range of these Whales southward 

 has not been accurately determined ; but no species corresponding 

 with the Arctic Right Whale has as yet been met with in the 

 Antarctic icy seas. 



FIG. 78. The right tympanic bone of an immature individual of the Greenland Whale 

 (Balcsna mysticetus), from the inner (A) and outer () aspects. J natural size. (From the 

 Proc. Zool. Soc.) 



Remains of Right Whales are of not uncommon occurrence in the 

 Pliocene Crag deposits of England and Belgium. The tympanics 

 of B. affinis from these deposits appear to indicate a species closely 

 allied to B. mysticetus, in which this bone is long and angulated 

 anteriorly (Fig. 78) ; while the tympanics from the same deposits 

 described as B. primigenia are shorter and more rounded at the 

 antero- inferior angle, thus resembling those of B. australis. A 

 smaller species, having an estimated length of about 20 feet, has 

 been described as Balcenula balcenopsis, the generic distinction being 

 made on account of the free condition of the atlas and seventh 

 cervical vertebrae ; but it seems scarcely advisable to regard such a 

 feature as indicating more than a less specialised species. Balcena 

 (Balcenotus) insignis is a whale of somewhat larger dimensions, in 

 which the atlas is generally, and the seventh cervical vertebra 



