called " Steypirey^r " hy the Icelanders. 327 



latter were really identical with one of them, it could hardly be 

 said with which, as long as we had only the description com- 

 municated above to go by. To this it must be added that, in 

 spite of the perfect resemblance as to colour, it can at most be 

 probable, but far from certain, that the '' Steypirey^r " is 

 really identical with either of the above-mentioned whales, 

 if two cetaceans can exist which, with a striking resemblance 

 in colour, combine such essential differences in their osteology 

 that they must not only be considered as different species, but 

 must even be referred to different sections of the great genus 

 Balmnoptera^ — one,the"Tunnolik,"orOstend whale, to the sec- 

 tion of which Dr. J. E. Gray has made his genus 8Maldius'^^ 

 the other, Balmnoptera Carolince^ to the genus Physalus. There 



* In a recently published essay on two subfossil whales discovered in 

 Sweden (Upsala, 1867), my excellent friend Prof. Lilljeborg has esta- 

 blished a new genus {Flowerius) for the Ostend Whale. Among the 

 characteristics, however, pointed out, the one taken from the position of 

 the dorsal fin is not very well chosen ; for when, in the generic character, 

 he writes of the place of this fin as " somewhat in front of the posterior 

 fifth of the entire body's length," this statement may indeed be tolerably 

 correct (provided the measurements given are accurate) as far as the 

 *' Tunnolik " stranded at Godhavn (the identity of which with the Ostend 

 whale is by no means proved) is concerned ; but it cannot be applied to 

 the specimen which is considered the type of the genus. Nor do I believe 

 that it can be regarded as a certain characteristic, that the atlas '^ has 

 the lateral processes above the middle and of a conical form," while these 

 processes are " compressed and situated in about the middle of the sides " 

 in Sibbaldiifs. As detailed descriptions of the atlas of the Ostend whale 

 do not exist, and as Lilljeborg has not seen the bone himself, he can 

 only have taken this character from Dubar's figure of the vertebra 

 in his ' OsteogTaphie ' of the said whale ; but these figures are too rough 

 to be trusted in this way, more especially as, in the figure of the 

 atlas, the transverse processes are not even represented alike on both 

 sides. Perhaps the left one may arise in the way stated by Lillje- 

 borg ; but the right one seems to arise as in Sibbaldius, and I do not 

 see how it may safely be inferred from the drawing whether they are 

 conical or compressed. Finally, it is scarcely correct, in the generic 

 diagnosis, to indicate as a character for Flowerius that only the second 

 cervical vertebra has annular transverse processes : Dubar, indeed, 

 says so ; but it has escaped Lilljeborg that it is stated expressly by Van 

 der Linden, whose essay on the Ostend whale was published later than 

 Dubar's, and is evidently a more trustworthy work, that the third cervical 

 vertebra is provided with annular transverse processes as well as the 

 second. Thus the differences between the genera Flowerius and Sibbaldius 

 are not even so great as imagined by Lilljeborg, though, if they were, 

 they would not, in my opinion, be sufficient to justify the establishment 

 of a new genus. But, however this may be, there is no need of the name 

 Flowerius ; for Gray has already, in his ' Catalogue of Seals and Whales 

 in the British Museum' (published in 1866) subdivided his genus Sibbal- 

 dius into two sections, which he does not, indeed, call genera, but of which 

 the one constituted for Sibbaldius laticeps has a special name, Hudolphius. 

 If accordingly the genus Sibbaldius must be broken up into two, I suppose 

 Rudolphius must be adopted for the genus in which the S. hticeps is to 



