THE BRITISH MAMMALS : THEIR GENERA AND SPECIES. 4! 



like a new moon in shape, with the horns pointing backwards. 

 There is a well-developed dorsal fin in the hinder third of the back. 

 The nippers are rounded ; in the male they are a seventh of the 

 total length, in the female much smaller, only a twelfth. The 

 length over all is between twenty and thirty feet, and there 

 are forty-three vertebrae. The first six ribs, being double-headed, 

 are each attached to two vertebrae. The colour is black above, 

 grey below, when young, and brownish all over when fully grown. 

 The females are more numerous than the males and smaller ; 



BOTTLENOSE WHALE. 



(Hyperoodon restrains.) 



the young soon after birth are ten feet long. This whale 

 feeds almost entirely on cephalopods, and is generally met 

 with in schools solitary individuals being, as a rule, old males 

 wonderful stories being told of a whole school becoming the prey 

 of the whaler rather than desert one of their injured comrades. The 

 Bottlenose always makes a brave fight for life, and can stay under 

 water for two hours when harpooned. It has been observed to leap 

 many feet out of the water and turn round its head while in the air 

 so as to look about, and, as it returns to the waves, to dive in head 

 first, instead of falling into them sideways like the larger whales. 



Lagenorhynchus. Plate xxvi. GET ACE A. 



69. albirostris, WHITE-BEAKED DOLPHIN. Beak and lips white. 



70. acutus, WHITE-SIDED DOLPHIN. Beak and lips black. 



Some twenty examples of the White-beaked Dolphin have been 

 caught in British waters. It is an Arctic species, gregarious in 

 habit, and seldom straying far south. The head is rather rounded, 

 the beak little more than a rim, and the dorsal fin and flippers are 

 narrow and falcate in shape, the flippers being twice as long as the 

 dorsal is high. The colours are sharply contrasted, purplish black 

 above, the beak, lips, and under-parts white, with whitish mottled 



