called ^^ Steyjnrey^r^'' by the Icelanders. 325 



colour becomes a little lighter, and that part of the belly which 

 is behind the furrows is uniformly grey ; in the anterior plaited 

 region the ridges are blackish grey, but the furrows between 

 them light grey. The caudal fin is blackish grey on both 

 sides, in some individuals also marked with lighter spots in 

 the dark ground-colour. Finally, the distribution of the co- 

 lours on the pectoral fins is very characteristic : their external 

 surface is blackish grey, sometimes spotted with somewhat 

 lighter specks ; the inside, on the contrary, is perfectly milk- 

 wdiite, forming a contrast the more striking, as no other part of 

 the body is of this colour ; only just at the base of the fin the 

 white colour changes into a greyish white. Mr. Hallas also 

 found in most individuals some small white linear spots irre- 

 gularly scattered about the belly ; they vary in number and 

 are most probably, as he conjectures, only scars. Leaving 

 these out of consideration, the distribution of the colours is 

 evidently very constant in this species of fin-whale. The only 

 variations which seem to occur are the grey stains that some- 

 times appear in the darkest-coloured parts of the body, as also 

 in a few cases somewhat darker spots may be found on the 

 grey belly ; but these variations are evidently far too small to 

 have any essential effect on the general appearance of the 

 whale. The whalebone seems always to be uniformly black. 

 Mr. Hallas' s notes contain little more than the description 

 of the colour and some measurements. But the latter show 

 that the ^' Steypirey^r" is one of the largest of the fin- whales. 

 The length of the largest of the six specimens measured is 

 stated to have been 80 Danisli feet ; the smallest was as much 

 as 70 feet ; and though, no doubt, some few feet must be sub- 

 tracted from each of these figures, Mr. Hallas having measured 

 the distance between the tip of the beak and the notch in the 

 tail not in a straight line, but along the curvature of the back, 

 yet, on the other hand, none of these whales appear to have 

 been quite full-grown, as the coalescence of the epiphyses 

 with the bodies of the vertebrge, Mr. Hallas informs me, 

 was not completed in any of them. It would also appear 

 that the Icelanders are right in supposing that the form of the 

 dorsal fin is a characteristic of this whale, though perhaps they 

 do not give the peculiarities of the fin with perfect correctness 

 when they say that one of the two kinds of large fin-whales 

 distinguished by them has a shorter as well as a lower dorsal 

 fin than the other ; for the dorsal fin of the ^' Steypirey^r " 

 seems not to be particularly short ; but it is remarkably low, 

 so that its height is contained three times and a half in its 

 length. It was not, in any of the individuals in which it was 

 measured by Mr. Hallas, more than 7 inches high. So incon- 



