WHALES. 233 



distended to a much greater diameter than the animal 

 usually has. 



The SHARP- LIPPED variety (baltenoptera hoops?) is of 

 inferior dimensions, and is indeed the smallest of the 

 baleen or whalebone whales. The upper jaw in this, 

 as in the last variety, is much shorter and narrower 

 than the lower, but they both terminate in sharp points, 

 which circumstance has obtained for it the name of 

 the " beaked whale." This, indiscriminately, with the 

 former variety, is called the " offin whale " by common 

 observers, and therefore the one may have sometimes 

 been confounded with the other. Indeed, with the ex- 

 ception of the form of the lower lip, and the difference 

 of size in some of the specimens, their appearance and 

 habits are very much alike. They both have the same 

 corrugated skin on the belly ; and probably the same 

 means of inflating or blowing it up, to increase their 

 buoyancy. Though their native region is the Green- 

 land seas, they are yet not unfrequent visitants of the 

 most northern part of the British ocean. They are 

 often seen in the sounds and bays among the Orkney 

 islands, at the time when the shoals of herrings are 

 migrating to the south. A very beautiful specimen, 

 seventeen feet in length, which was caught upon the 

 dogger-bank, is described by Hunter in the Philoso- 

 phical Transactions for 1787. The remains found in 

 its stomach were those of the dog-fish (spinax acan- 

 thiasj) the usual length of which is about three feet, 

 which proves that the finned balance, though equally 

 destitute of the means of biting, are much more vora- 

 cious in their swallowing than the common whale. The 

 x 3 



