390 



in the Museum at Pampeluna, where it remained till 1858, 

 when it was purchased by Eschricht for the Copenhagen 

 Museum. Its description has been delayed by the 

 lamented death of that eminent naturalist, and is now 

 eagerly awaited from the pen of his friend and survivor, 

 Prof. Reinhardt. 



In the Atlantic Right- Whale, the head is much shorter 

 in proportion to the body than in B. mysticetus, not ex- 

 ceeding one-fourth of the entire length of the animal; 

 the baleen is also much shorter. In these respects, as 

 well as in the manner in which the angles of the gape are 

 deflected below the eyes, it more nearly resembles the 

 B. australis of the southern hemisphere. The colour 

 appears to be always a uniform black, without any white 

 markings. 



As we have not seen any detailed description of the 

 skeleton, now at Copenhagen, we are not able to point 

 out the osteological characters in which it differs from 

 B. mysticetus. The vertebral column is described as being 

 -much more massive, and the number of the vertebrae is 

 stated to be different. The first rib is double-headed, and 

 in consequence Dr. Gray has recently placed this species 

 in his genus Hunterius, but it is now generally acknow- 

 ledged that no reliance can be placed on this character in 

 discriminating the species of Cetacea. Its extreme varia- 

 bility has been pointed out by Reinhardt, Van Beneden, 

 and others, who have shown that it occasionally appears as 

 an individual peculiarity in several species, as in Balcenop- 

 tera musculus and B. sibbaldii, and also more rarely in Orca 

 gladiator and Delphinus delphis, while it appears to be 

 constant in one species only, namely, BaL laticeps. Prof. 

 Turner, in a paper in the fifth volume of the ' ' Journal of 

 Anatomy and Physiology," has shown good reasons for 

 the belief that this character is owing to the ankylosis of 



