SOWERBY'S WHALE. 433 



plete skeleton of a young female taken at Ostend in 

 1835 ; a lower jaw found on the Norwegian coast is 

 in the Museum at Christiana, and Herr Malm informs us 

 that the complete skeleton of a Scandinavian specimen is 

 preserved in the Stockholm Museum. It is a strange 

 coincidence that, as far as is known, all the British speci- 

 mens have been males and the continental ones females. 



Nothing whatever is known of the habits of Sowerby's 

 Whale. The one which came ashore at Havre is recorded 

 to have uttered cries like the lowing of a cow. 



The appearance of the head, as shown in Dr. Busteed's 

 photographs, is very curious. The front slopes gradually 

 into the beak, the blow-hole forming an indentation as 

 seen in profile. The upper jaw is both shorter and 

 narrower than the lower, the projecting teeth being 

 visible externally like the tusks of a Boar, and working 

 in a groove in the thickened and hardened lip of the 

 upper jaw. Under the throat are the two diverging 

 furrows so characteristic of this sub-family. The flip- 

 pers and dorsal-fin are small. Sowerby's specimen is 

 described as black above, nearly white below, the skin 

 being very smooth and satiny. " Immediately under 

 the cuticle the sides were completely covered with white 

 vermicular streaks in every direction, which at a little 

 distance appeared like irregular cuts with a sharp 

 instrument." 



The skull differs so much from that of true Ziphius, 

 that it seems necessary to distinguish the species generic- 

 ally. The nares are not placed at the bottom of a deep 

 hollow, but open directly on the top of the skull ; the 

 rostrum is long and narrow, and the two compressed 

 teeth of the lower-jaw are placed at some distance from 

 its anterior extremity. The skeleton in the Brussels 

 Museum has thirty-eight vertebrae and ten pairs of ribs. 



3 K 



