RUDOLPHI'S RORQUAL. 409 



have been sold for manure. This specimen was a female, 

 forty-one feet long, black above and white below, the upper 

 surface of the flippers black, and the baleen " bluish- 

 black and yellowish-white." The number of the verte- 

 brae was sixty, of the ribs fourteen pair, the first being 

 double-headed. The identity of this Charmouth Whale 

 has given rise to much difference of opinion ; Mr. Sweet- 

 ing, as we have seen, considered it a new species, 

 Dr. Gray refers it, along with the Ostend whale, to 

 Sibbaldius boreatis, while MM. Van Beneden and Gervais 

 regarded them both as B. musculus. Prof. Flower, we 

 believe, considers that it must be referred to this species, 

 and it certainly seems to come nearer to this than to any 

 other described species. 



In the Museum of the University of Cambridge there 

 is a skull of a Rorqual which was cast ashore on the 

 Island of Islay in 1866, which MM. Van Beneden and 

 Gervais refer to this species, but it has not yet been 

 properly described or figured. In the Museum of the 

 Royal College of Surgeons there are several bones un- 

 doubtedly belonging to B. laticeps, but their history is 

 quite unknown, and it is impossible to discover whether 

 they are British or not. 



Rudolphi's Rorqual has the upper jaw wide, and the 

 dorsal-fin small. Its colour is black above, pure white 

 beneath, the upper surface of the flippers being black 

 without any white band. The baleen in the Bergen 

 skeleton is black. 



In the skeleton the normal number of vertebrae would 

 appear to be fifty-eight, and of ribs fourteen pairs ; the 

 bifurcation of the heads of the first pair, found as an 

 individual peculiarity in other Fin- Whales, has been found 

 in every specimen of this species which has yet been 

 described. The rostrum of the skull is very broad, the 



3 G 



