178 ALLEN: NEW ENGLAND WHALEBONE WHALES. 



belly and high dorsal fin. The name Balaena rostrata var. major is given it, and its skeleton 

 appears to have been preserved at Greifswald. Eschricht (1899) refers to the specimen, and 

 from the fact that he credits it with fifteen pairs of ribs, it was probably a Finback. The 

 British naturalist Fleming, in 1828, proposed to call the Common Finback Physalis vulgaris, 

 though his account probably relates to the Blue Whale as well, while in the same year the 

 French naturalist Lesson gave the name Balaenoptera mediterraneensis to the Finback of the 

 Mediterranean Sea, founding his account on Lac6pede's description of a specimen from the 

 coast of Southern France. Fischer the following year, 1829, independently named the Medi- 

 terranean Whale supposing it to be different from that of the Atlantic. His name, Balaena 

 antiquorum, is based chiefly on Lacepede's description, but he refers also to the accounts of 

 Pliny and the older naturalists. This same year, 1829, a Finback Whale was cast ashore on 

 the French coast at Saint Cyprien and formed the subject of a brief communication by MM. 

 Farines and Carcassonne, who called it Balaenoptera aragous after M. Arago, one of the chief 

 men of the D6partement where the whale came ashore. This name is quoted by Gervais (1864), 

 but does not seem to appear elsewhere in literature. The following year, 1830, Companyo 

 published a more extended account of this same specimen, which he called, unfortunately, 

 Balaena musculus of Linne, referring it to the subgenus Balaenoptera. In the application of 

 this specific name to the Finback Whale, most later writers have followed him until True (1898) 

 showed that Linne's musculus refers to the Blue Whale. Thus, previous to 1831, no less than 

 eleven different trivial names were proposed for the Common Finback of the North Atlantic. 



Schlegel, in 1862, was the first to employ the combination Balaenoptera physalus, which, as 

 it now appears, is the correct term for our Common Finback. Meanwhile Sweeting in 1840 had 

 described as Balaenoptera tenuirostris a specimen stranded at Charmouth Beach, England, and in 

 1856 a Finback captured in Orkney was named Physalus duguidii by Heddle. Van Beneden, 

 in 1857, raised to generic rank the subgenus Pterobalaena, proposed in 1849 by Eschricht, and 

 as the custom was, gave a new specific name at the same time Pterobalaena communis. 



The synonymy of this species furnishes a good index of the progress of cetology during 

 the last century. The lack of knowledge as to the amount of individual variation in these 

 great mammals, and the difficulty of making exact comparisons, led for a time to the belief 

 that there were divers sorts characterized by various differences in form and skeleton which 

 Gray, Eschricht, Lilljeborg, Cope and others proposed to consider as distinct species or even 

 genera. Thus were founded such genera as Pterobalaena, Sibbaldius, Benedenia, with sundry 

 species, as Pterobalaena communis, Physalus duguidii, Benedenia knoxii, as well as Sibbaldius 

 tuberosus and S. tectirostris based on American specimens by Cope. But with the advance 

 of knowledge, it has become apparent that the small or fancied differences which these names 

 were intended to mark, are after all mainly matters of individuality or misconception, and 

 that they all refer to but a single species. 





