44 



CETACEANS. 



the back-fin represented merely by a low ridge : and it also agrees with that 

 animal, and thereby differs from the other members of the family, in having all the 

 vertebrae of the neck separate. The flippers are short, very broad across the 

 middle, and bluntly pointed ; and the short and rounded head is separated from 

 the body by a slight constriction indicating the neck. The teeth are usually nine 

 or ten in number on each side of the jaws: but vary in size, and are often irreg- 

 ularly and obliquely implanted. The white whale attains a length of 16 or 16£ 

 feet. In colour the young are light greyish brown ; but the skin of the adult is a 



Distribution. 



THE white whale (A nat. size). 



pure glistening white. Baron Nordenskiold says that the adult animal is 

 singularly beautiful, the glistening white hide scarcely even showing a spot, 

 scratch, or wrinkle. 



The white whale ranges as far northward as latitude 81° 35', 

 while it occasionally straggles as far southward as Cape Cod, in 

 Massachusetts, and the Scottish coasts. It occurs in large herds on the coasts of 

 Spitsbergen and Novaia Zemlia, and especially frequents the neighbourhood of the 

 mouths of rivers, up which it will ascend for considerable distances. Five instances 

 of the occurrence of this species on the coasts of Scotland have been recorded ; the 

 last of these being in the summer of 1879, when a specimen w r as found near 

 Dunrobin, Sutherlandshire, at ebb-tide, with its flukes caught between two short 



