

COMMON FINBACK WHALE. 177 



lst>:>. .'Hii/ii, iiojtti 'ni xynrnndylus A. Muller, Schrift. K. Phys. Oekonom. Ges. Konigsberg, vol. 4, p. 38-78, 

 pi. 1-3. 



iMi I. Iturtiutilit.i ant i quorum Gervais, Compt. Rend. Acad. Sci. Paris, vol. 59, p. 880. 



IStll. Hi-Hi'drtiia knnxii Gray, Proc. Zool. Soc. London, p. 212, fig. 8-8b. 



isti'.i. Xililmldim tubcrosua Cope, Proc. Acad. Nat. Sci., Phila., p. 17 ( = B. physalus, fide True, 1904). 



IMl'.i. Sililinldiuit tret i rostris Cope, Proc. Acad. Nat. Sci., Phila., p. 17. 



1S7I . linirdrnla Loops Gray, Supplement to Cat. Seals and Whales British Museum, p. 52 (not Gray, Synop- 

 sis, 1865, as here stated). 



1S7I . Pit i/.ial ii.i musculus Malm, Kongl. Svenska Vet.-Akad. Hand!., vol. 9, pt. 2, no. 2, p. 40. 



1S7.'{. Pliysal us dugcridii Gray, Zoologist, ser. 2, p. 3363 (misprint). 



Isxi. Dubertus rhodinsulensis Trumbull, inG. B. Goode, Fisheries and Fishery Industries of U. S., section 1, 

 vol. 1, p. 29 (nomcn nudum). 



1914. li/iliicinijiti'm muscularis Daniel and Hamilton, Kept. 83d Meeting British Assn. Adv. Sci., 1913, p. 

 155 (errorim). 



History and Nomenclature. 



Although the Finback had long been known in a general way, and is probably the species 

 referred to by Pliny as known to the Ancients, it was perhaps not until 1675 that it was recog- 

 nix;il)ly described and figured by Martens in his Spitzbergische oder Gronlandische Reise 

 Beschreibung gethan im Jahr 1671, where it is called "Finfisch." In 1725 Paul Dudley, in 

 In- e.-sav on the natural history of the whales of New England, also distinguished this species 

 carefully, and it is on these two accounts that the Latin names of the earlier systematists, 

 Klein, Brisson, and Linne, were chiefly based. True (1898) has carefully analysed Linne's 

 references in the tenth edition of the Systema Naturae and has shown conclusively that his 

 Balaena physalus is the Common Finback, since it is based on Martens's account. Linnets 

 lidlncna loops, he further proves, was founded on Sibbald's account (published in Phalaino- 

 logiu Nova, 1692) of a young whale of the same species, hence it becomes a synonym of physalus, 

 and is not applicable to the Humpback, notwithstanding current usage to the contrary till 

 very recent years. 



In his Histoire Naturelle des Ce'tace's, 1803-4, the French naturalist Lac6pede erected 

 the genus Balaenoptera for the Finner Whales, and through a misconception, named as B. gibbar 

 a supposed species without throat folds. This, however, was undoubtedly based on an im- 

 perfect figure by Martens, 1675, in which no throat folds were shown. The name Balae- 

 tiii/i/i'ra rorqual was given in the same work to what was considered the real Finback. 

 In 1811 Neill redescribed the Finback from a specimen from Scottish waters under the 

 name of Balaena sulcata, in reference to the longitudinal throat folds, and in 1841, Schlegel, 

 in an anatomical paper on the same species used this name in a trinomial, Balaena 

 nnlrnta arclica. In a separately published work by Rosenthal, 1827, is a very circumstantial 

 account of the capture of a whale on the west coast of Riigen, Germany, two years before. It 

 is accompanied by a plate, drawn to scale, showing a Balaenoptera some 43 feet long with white 



