called " Steyjpirey^r " hy the Icelanders, 335 



the Zoological Society of London on the 12th of March, com- 

 municated some remarks on Mr. Malm's new species, suggest- 

 ing that the latter would most probably prove identical with 

 Balcenoptera Sibhaldu. I think this supposition to be highly 

 probable; and to the reasons for it (which, I suppose*, Flower 

 has taken from resemblances of the skeletons) we must now also 

 add the remarkable correspondence in colour, the peculiar low 

 dorsal fin, and, finally, the backward position of this fin, just 

 before the posterior fourth of the animal. Yet I must confess 

 that I have not succeeded, by the assistance of Mr. Malm's de- 

 scription and measurements of the skull, in entirely convincing 

 myself that the latter has the same broad beak by which the 

 B. Sibhaldu is at once distinguished ; and it is to be regretted 

 that Malm has given no figure of the cranium that might 

 assist his description, and which I am sure most zoologists, 

 if they had been allowed to choose, would have much pre- 

 ferred to several of the illustrations (of rather doubtful scien- 

 tific value) with which his work is so abundantly provided. 

 Nor must it be overlooked that Malm, who has had an oppor- 

 tunity of comparing in detail his own whale with a skeleton 

 of B. antiquorum^ and who in general is very minute in point- 

 ing out the various more or less weighty reasons which have 

 induced him to consider it a species different from the latter, does 

 not make one word of allusion to any difierence in the form of 

 the cranium ; and yet it would be thought that if the skull of 

 his whale had resembled the illustration here given (fig. 2), 

 such a peculiar form could not have quite escaped his at- 

 tention. But we know, on the other hand, that even the 

 two specimens of Balcenoptera Sihhaldn on which the spe- 

 cies is founded differ somewhat from each other as to the 

 breadth of the beak, and it appears that in Balcenoptera anti- 

 quorum^ t:oo, the breadth of this part varies in the different 

 specimens t. Thus it may be that the diagnostic character 

 afforded by the beak has not been so strongly developed in 

 Malm's whale as in the Icelandic cranium, and so might the 

 more easily have been left unnoticed ; and though I have not 

 ventured to suppress this little difficulty which may possibly 

 still be found in Flower's view of the matter, yet his supposition 

 is, after all, much more probable than that two species of fin- 

 whales resembling each other so closely in most respects, and 

 yet specifically distinct, should exist in the northern seas. 



* I regret that I have not yet had an opportunity of becoming acquainted 

 with Mr. Flower's paper itself. 



t Mr. Flower states that in six crania of Balmioptera antiquorum the 

 proportion of the breadth across the middle of the beak to the length of 

 the skull was found to vaiy between 18 and 21 to 100. (See Proc. Zool. 

 Soc. of London, 1865, p. 473.) 



