CHAPTER IV. 



THE BRITISH MAMMALS: THEIR GENERA AND 

 SPECIES, 



THE object of this chapter is to give the main distinctions 

 between the species, and other brief notes that may aid in 

 their identification. For the distinctions between the genera the 

 reader must refer to the preceding chapter. The number is that of 

 the coloured figure of the species described. 



Balama. Plate xix. GET A CEA . 



53. australis, BISCAY WHALE. No teeth ; no dorsal fin ; head a 

 quarter the length of the body ; lower lip black and 

 strongly curved. 



This large whale, some fifty feet in length, occasionally appears in 

 British waters, and is generally mistaken for the Greenland, or 

 Arctic, whale to which it is very near akin, but which does not 

 range so far south. It is called a " right " whale, as being one of 

 ihe right sort to catch for its blubber and whalebone ; and it differs 

 from the rorquals, or fin-whales, in being without a back fin, in 

 having no grooves on its throat and chest owing to its mouth being 

 so wide that it is unnecessary to dilate it, and in having five digits 

 in the flippers instead of four. There are two blow-holes, each 

 consisting of a straight slit ; the eye is very small compared to the 

 size of the head, but is about four times as large as the human eye. 

 There are generally fifteen pairs of ribs, only one pair of which are 

 joined to the heart-shaped breast-bone, and fifty-three vertebrae, being 

 three more than in the Greenland species. It is the " black whale " 

 of the American whalers, and has no white markings about it what- 

 ever, and it can be further distinguished from the Greenland species 

 by the curve of the lower lip rising above the level of the eye, by 

 the smaller size of the head, and by the shorter and coarser whale- 

 bone. This is black in colour, fraying out at the edge into a fringe 

 of long, tough hairs, and folds back on the sides of the palate when 

 the mouth is closed, the front blades passing below the hinder ones 

 along a channel between the tongue and lower jaw. As the huge 

 mouth opens the whalebone drops down round the aperture like a 



25 C 



