LESSEE, RORQUAL. 411 



GET A CEA . BA LMNOPTERID&. 



(MYSTACOCETI.) 



LESSER RORQUAL. 

 Balanoptera rostrata (Fabricius). 



Specific Character. Black above, white below ; flippers black, with a broad 

 white band across the middle ; baleen yellowish -white, tinged with pink in 

 the live animal. Vertebrae 48; ribs 11 pairs; sternum in form of a cross, 

 longer than broad. Length of adult 25 to 30 feet. 



Balcena rostrata, FABRICIUS, Fauna Gteenl. (1790), 40. 



Rorgualus minor, (KNOX) Naturalist's Library, xxvi. 142. 

 Tikagulik of Greenlanders and Eskimo ; Tschikagulk of Alaskan Indians ? 

 Vaagevhal of Norwegians ; Seigval or Seival of Finns ; Little F inner and 

 P-ike Whale of whalers. 



THE Lesser Rorqual was first described by Fabricius 

 under the name of Bal&na rostrata ; Martens, also, dis- 

 tinguished it in his Spitzbergen voyage and speaks of it 

 as the "Kleyne Walvisch " or Little Whale. John 

 Hunter examined a specimen taken in the Thames, and 

 gave a good figure, of which our illustration is a copy, in 

 the " Philosophical Transactions " for 1789. The two 

 Cuviers, however, having seen no specimens, regarded the 

 Lesser Rorqual as the young of a larger species, but it is 

 now well established as one of the best marked and most 

 easily distinguished species of the family. 



This small Fin-Whale is an inhabitant of the North 

 Atlantic and Arctic Oceans, and Eschricht believes it to 



