127 



This animal, although retained here as a species of Balsenoptera, is 

 now considered by Dr. Gray as the type of a new genus, the Swinhoia. 



In closing this short history of the Finner whales, by far the most 

 rapacious of the whalebone-bearing group, I may observe that the 

 economy, with scarcely a single modification, of each individual, is 

 characteristically portrayed in the following brief extract : " In a 

 glassy sea, near Wick, a Finner rushed round us in every direction, 

 with its upper jaw above the water, blowing with great violence and 

 noise, and diving sometimes tranquilly, sometimes in a seething wave 

 created by its fins and tail. It was evidently feeding on herrings, as 

 every now and then it would rush headlong into portions of the sea, 

 where the smooth surface was broken by the shoals of fish. The blow- 

 holes were at times flat and unprojecting, at others boldly prominent, 

 the animal evidently having the power of raising or depressing these 

 organs. The fin whales of Orkney and Caithness every season are 

 observed in pursuit of herrings." Ifeddle* P. Z. S., 1856. 



Family XIV. MEGAPTEEID.E. 1 



HUMP-BACKED WHAI/ES. 



Baleen short, broad, triangular, rather twisted when dry, edged inter- 

 nally with a series of rigid fibres ; dorsal fin, or rather hump, low, broad, 

 placed behind the middle of the body ; pectoral fins, narrow, very long, 

 nearly one-fifth of the entire length of the body; fingers four, very long ; 

 head broad, flattened, less than one-fourth the length of the body ; 

 throat, chest, and part of the belly, deeply, broadly, longitudinally fur- 

 rowed with dilatable folds of the skin ; body comparatively short and 

 robust ; skull intermediate in form between the preceding and following 

 families ; beak broad behind, contracted in front ; lower jaw, slender, 

 much arched, longer than the upper one ; cervical vertebrae commonly 

 free. 



MEGAPTEBA BOOPS,* O. Fabricius. The Keporkak. 

 Synonyms Balcena boops, 0. Fabricius, Nilsson, Turton. 

 Balcena longimana, Eudolphi. 



Hegaptera longimana, Gray, S. &"W., p. 119, Suppl., p. 50. 

 Megaptera loops, Van Beneden and Gervais. 

 The KeporTcaTc of the Greenlanders. 



Colour black, excepting the pectoral fins and belly, which are white, 

 mottled, and streaked with black ; the lower lip is studded with two 

 series of tubercles. 



Length, from 45 to 60 feet. 



Inhab. Coasts of Greenland, Norway, Baltic, Scotland, Bermudas, 

 &c. 



1 fjLfyas, great, and intp^v, fin. 



2 Povs ox, and <ty bellow, in allusion to the violent blowing of this species. 



