441 



most ancient members of the genus, such detached epiphyses are found fossil, and have been 

 mistaken for a circular flat kind of shell. 



Presented by Prof. Owen, F.R.S. 



2442. A blade of baleen or 'whalebone' of the Baltena mysticetus. It measures 

 11 feet 9 inches in length. Hunterian. 



2 4-43. A blade of baleen of the Balaena mysticetus. 



(See the Gallery Preparations, Nos. 319 323, for an illustration of the nature, formation 

 and uses of this peculiar substance.) 



Hunterian. 



Genus Baleenoptera (Finner Whales). 



2444. Skeleton of a young Piked Whale (Baleena rostrata, Fabricius and Hunter). 



It is of the individual dissected by Hunter, and alluded to in the paragraph of his paper 

 ' On Whales,' in which he says, " Of the Balceita rostrata of Fabricius I had one 1 7 feet 

 long*." 



In the present skeleton forty-four vertebrae are preserved, of which seven are cervical, eleven 

 dorsal, and the rest lumbo-caudal, but wanting the terminal depressed vertebrae. Eleven 

 pairs of ribs are preserved, but not the sternum, nor the hyoid arch, nor the rudimental ischia. 

 The haemal arches are attached beneath the twelfth and some of the succeeding vertebrae of 

 the lumbo-caudal series. The cervicals are extremely short or compressed in the direction of 

 their axis, but are not anchylosed, with the exception of the first and seventh : their trans- 

 verse processes are widely perforated or notched, according as the inferior (pleurapophysial) 

 portion joins, or not, the superior (diapophysial) part : in the seventh vertebra this part only 

 is developed : it is longer in the first dorsal, and the diapophyses increase both in length and 

 strength in the succeeding dorsals and support the pleurapophyses or vertebral ribs. The 

 articular ends of the centrum still retain their primitive condition of epiphyses in most of the 

 vertebrae of this skeleton. 



Hunterian. 



2445. The anterior extremity of the upper jaw of a young Piked Whale (Balcena 

 rostrata} ; showing the arrangement of the broad and short triangular baleen 

 plates in a single series along each margin of the palate, set at right angles to 

 its long axis : the plates are fringed along their inner border, and slightly bent 

 transversely with the convexity forwards. Hunterian. 



* Animal (Economy, 8vo, ed. 1837, p. 332. tab. xlviii. 



SL 



