266 THE WHALEBONE WHALES OF THE WESTERN NORTH ATLANTIC. 



Cape of Good Hope. These different whales have for common characters a 

 very small head, a bifid first rib, the lower ends of the ribs very thick and almost 



round. 



"The Sarde of the Newfoundland banks, and the Balcena cisarctica of the 

 coast of North America, belong to a different group, very near to the Balcena aus- 

 tralis of the Cape of Good Hope, and the B. antipodum of New Zealand. The 

 head is comparatively longer than in Hunterius ; the first rib is simple; the lower 

 extremities of the ribs are compressed. 



" There exist then in our temperate regions of the Atlantic at least two species 

 of Right whales." 



In 1881, Fischer again raised the question of the number of species of Right 

 whales in the North Atlantic (44, 33-55), but by this time had somewhat modified 

 his views. He reviews the literature of the subject, ancient and modern, and devotes 

 two pages to conclusions. These are in brief as follows : 



1. That " it may be considered very probable that (a) the ' Nordcaper,' (b) the 

 ' Sletbag,' (<?) Balcena tarentina of Capellini, and (d ) Balcena biscayensis belong 

 to the same species, as well as the fossil species B. lamanoni, glacialis, and 

 svedenborgi." 



2. That " the ' Sarde ' and B. cisarctica of Cope are synonyms and (awaiting 

 fuller information) distinct at least as a race from the whale of the Basques, by the 

 longer head. The skeleton is otherwise similar." 



3. That Halibalce'na britannica, B. vanben^deniana, and B. mediterranea 

 " have not sufficient characters to be classified," and can be as well associated with 

 the Nordcaper as with B. mysticetus. 



Fischer adds the following: "A species, among cetaceans, is perhaps what we 

 call a genus ; and in that case, the Nordkaper would be a single one, with two or 

 three races, with distinct geographical distribution." 



The second of the foregoing opinions is that which is of most interest in the 

 present connection. On page 41, Fischer makes the remarkable statement, already 

 mentioned elsewhere (see p. 13), that armed with the compass and " balestrille" the 

 Basques roamed westward in the Atlantic and in 1372 discovered the banks of 

 Newfoundland, where they saw whales in abundance. This statement appears to 

 rest on a memoir prepared by the merchants of St. Jean de Luz and Cibourre 

 in 1710, and published in 1857. 1 The whale which they first found here, accord- 

 ing to Fischer, they considered different from the whale of the Bay of Biscay, 

 and called Sardaco Baleac, or the whale which goes in herds or schools, in con- 

 tradistinction to the former, which appears singly. Continuing their explorations, 

 they entered the Gulf of St. Lawrence where they found still another and better 

 whale which they called Grand Bayaco Baleac or Grand Bay whale. They after- 

 wards recognized this as the same as the Greenland whale, B. mysticetus, found 

 at Spitzbergen. 



The character of the evidence on which these statements rest is unknown to 



" Mdmoire address^ en 1710 a M. de Planthion, syndic general du pays de Labourd, par les 

 ndgociants de Saint-Jean-de-Luz et de Cibourre." (Journal La Gironde, 29 Avril, 1857.) 



