290 ALLEN: NEW ENGLAND WHALEBONE WHALES. 



Cope, in 1865, described the skeleton of a specimen found dead off Petit Manan Lighthouse, 

 Maine, and believing it to be distinct, gave it the specific name osphyia. This skeleton is still 

 preserved in the Niagara Museum. On similar grounds he named a West Indian specimen 

 M. bellicosa but True (1904) has shown that all these names must be considered synonyms of 

 nodosa. Gray's "var. moorei" founded on a young skeleton in the Liverpool Museum must be 

 added to these, as the characters claimed for it seem to be mere individual peculiarities. Other 

 names, generic and specific, have been given the Humpbacks of the Pacific and the Southern 

 Ocean, but the true status of these supposed forms is still uncertain and the names are not 

 here considered. 



A fossil Humpback apparently identical with the living species has been reported from 

 the Pleistocene deposits of eastern Canada. J. E. Gray also described in 1865 a single neck 

 vertebra found in subfossil condition on the coast of Devonshire, England. He considered 

 it to represent Lilljeborg's ^[Eschrichtius robustus a subfossil Finback Whale from Sweden - 

 but it was probably from a Humpback. 



The type locality of the North Atlantic Humpback is given by Bonnaterre as "Nouvelle 

 Angleterre" basing his original description on Dudley's account of the New England Hump- 

 back. 



Vernacular Names. 



Among the whalemen this is universally known as the Humpback to distinguish it from 

 the "Whale" (which commonly meant the Right Whale on our coasts) and the Finbacks; hence 

 the verb " humpbacking " as applied to the local cruises in pursuit of the species from our ports. 

 Other vernacular names are mere variants thus Dudley speaks of it as the "Bunch, or 

 Hump-back Whale," Turton writes it "Hump Whale," and Gray and Cope have rendered it 

 "Hunchbacked Whale." In other tongues it is called Buckelwal or Pflockfisch in German, 

 Stubhval in Danish, Baleine a bosse in French, Knolhval by the Norwegians. All these 

 names refer either to the large dermal tubercles (Knolen) or to the small adipose fin on the 

 lower part of the back, which is spoken of by Dudley as "a Bunch standing in the Place where 

 the Fin does in the Finback. This Bunch is as big as a Man's Head, and a Foot High, shaped 

 like a Plug pointing backwards." Bonnaterre's term "Tampon" Whale like the German 

 Pflockfish is merely a translation into French of this word "Plug." Eschricht suggests that 

 the name Humpback is derived from the rounded appearance of the animal as it dives. The 

 native name Keporkak of the Greenlanders was first introduced into scientific literature by 

 O. Fabricius in 1780, and is found in works of later writers. 



