394 BAL^NOPTERID^. 



individuals is certainly known. Of these the first was cast 

 ashore near Newcastle, 19th September, 1829, and was 

 figured and described by Dr. G. Johnston in the first volume 

 of the " Transactions of the Newcastle Natural History 

 Society." It was a female of about twenty-six feet in 

 length, and the contents of its stomach were not a little 

 remarkable, consisting of six Cormorants, while a seventh, 

 on which the Whale was supposed to have choked, was 

 found in its throat ; a few weeks before a Whale of fifty- 

 eight feet came ashore at Holy Island, but the species 

 was not ascertained. The second specimen, also a female, 

 was taken in the estuary of the Dee in 1863, and its 

 skeleton is now in the Free Museum of Liverpool. It 

 measured thirty-one feet four inches, and its stomach 

 contained shrimps. Some account of it was given by 

 Mr. T. Moore in the " Naturalist's Scrap-book " for that 

 year. In this specimen the second and third cervical 

 vertebrse are ankylosed, which does not appear to be 

 usually the case in this genus. 



The Hump-backed Whale is neither shy nor fierce, 

 and is easily killed. The Greenlanders attack it without 

 harpoons, stealing alongside in their Kajaks and stabbing 

 it with lances, but it is seldom persecuted by European 

 whalers, both its blubber and whalebone being of very 

 inferior quality. It feeds on various fish and mollusks, 

 among which Mallotus arcticus, Ammodytes tobianus and 

 Limacina arctica form its chief prey in the Greenland 

 seas, to which Holboll adds Gadus agilis and various 

 Crustaceans. Prof. Lilljeborg makes the following 

 remarks on the habits of this species : — "It often, 

 during calm weather, rests quietly on the surface 

 of the water, sometimes lying on one side, beating 

 itself with its pectoral fins, as if trying to rub away 

 something that annoyed itj sometimes it jumps quite 



