102 THE WHALEBONE WHALES OF THE WESTERN NORTH ATLANTIC. 



10. MEGAPTERA VERSABILIS Cope. 1869. 

 "The North Pacific Humpback." 



Original description: Proceedings, Academy of Natural Sciences, Phila., 1869, 

 p. 15. Presented for publication March 9, 1869; published July 20, 1869. 



Type-locality : North Pacific. 



No specimens. Named from Scammon's measurements and description. 



The original description is as follows : 



"The North Pacific hump-back. This species possesses pectoral fins, appar- 

 ently intermediate in length between those of the M. longimana and the species 

 with shorter fins, as M. osphyia and M. Tcuzira. They are between one-third and 

 one-fourth the length ; in the two last mentioned, between one-fourth and one-fifth. 

 It has 26 pectoral and gular folds. Siebold states that the M. Ttuzira possesses but 

 ten. In this animal the warts extend to the top of the front, a character not 

 ascribed to any Atlantic Megaptera. It differs also from M. longimana, and 

 resembles M. lalandii and M. htzira, in having the pectoral black on the external 

 face ; in the Greenland species and in the model of the Aleutian Islanders, described 

 by Chamisso, it is white. The characteristic color of the belly, in the most typical 

 form, is said to be entirely black. In this respect it differs from all other Megapterce, 

 which present more or less white, or grey, on the inferior surfaces at least." 



Note on MEGAPTERA BRASILIENSIS. 



Though the locality of the specimen to which Cope attached this name takes 

 it somewhat out of our range, I have thought it desirable to make reference to 

 it here, in order that comparisons might be instituted, if necessary, between it and 

 Cope's West Indian species, M. betticosa, with which it might be supposed to be 

 closely allied, if not identical. 



From the brief statement in the Proceedings of the Philadelphia Academy of 

 Natural Sciences, 1867, in which this name appears it might at first be supposed 

 that Cope intended to describe a new species. His commentary on the paragraph 

 in 1871, however, leads one to infer that such was not the case, though the matter 

 is left in a very unsatisfactory condition. As both records are very brief, I will 

 quote them in full. The paragraph of 1867 is as follows: 



" Prof. Cope presented to the Academy a young specimen of the whale, known 

 as the Bahia Finner, procured near Bahia, Brazil, the length of which was 21 feet. 

 He said it belonged to the genus Megaptera, Gray, with the hunchback whales of 

 sailors. The evidence consists in the very short di- and parapophyses of the 

 cervical vertebrae and the absence of all trace of acromion and coracoid processes. 

 The orbital processes of the frontal are narrowed externally and the muzzle consid- 

 erably narrowed. Judging from the name, it possesses a more fully developed 

 dorsal fin than the other Megaptera. It should be called Megaptera brazittensis." 

 (25, 32.) 



Cope's commentary on this, published in 1871, is as follows: 



"The species described by Gray (Catal. B. Mus., 1866, 62) as PJiysalus brasili- 

 msis, founded on some baleen of the ' Bahia Finner,' has been supposed by me 



