SIBBALD'S RORQUAL. 405 



tiful off the coasts of South Greenland, where it feeds 

 principally on Malotus arcticus. 



This species differs from the common Rorqual in many 

 important external characters, as well as in its anatomy. 

 The head is broad, the lower jaw both longer and broader 

 than the upper. The dorsal-fin is very low and small, 

 and the pectorals are long and broad. Tlie baleen is 

 entirely of a deep rich black, affording a good distinction 

 from B. musculus, in which it is always grey, mottled with 

 lighter tints. The colour of the upper parts is dark 

 grey, almost black on the back and shaded off on the 

 flanks ; the lower parts are also grey, but of a paler tint, 

 and irregularly mottled with whitish spots and patches. 

 The flippers are dark above, whitish beneath. 



In the skeleton, the rostrum of the skull is nearly half 

 as broad as it is long. The sternum is small and trefoil- 

 shaped and the bones of the flippers very long — so much 

 so, that those of the Hull specimen of forty-seven feet are 

 absolutely longer, says Prof. Flower, than those of a full- 

 grown Razor-back of seventy feet. There are sixty-four 

 vertebrae and sixteen pairs of ribs ; in Prof. Lidth de 

 Jeude's specimen there are only fifteen paii's, but in the 

 Whales of this family the last rib is sometimes compara- 

 tively rudimentary, and is easily lost in preparing the 

 skeleton. 



That this species attains a very great size cannot be 

 doubted, though many accounts arc probably exaggerated. 

 Holboll gives the length of the adult at sixty to eighty 

 feet ; Reinhardt says that six examples measured by Herr 

 S. Hallas varied from seventy to eighty feet (Danish). The 

 length of the " Ostend Whale," as already observed, has 

 been very variously stated. The following are some of the 

 measurements of the Longniddry specimen, as given by 

 Prof. Turner : — 



