xiv THE SOUTHERN RIGHT WHALE 197 



stream sets down from the north, its range is somewhat 

 further. There is no authentic instance of its having been 

 seen or captured upon any European coast. 



The southern right whale, or " black whale " (Fig. 10), as it 

 is often called by whalers, attains about the same length as 

 the last, but differs in being more slender in form, in possessing 

 a smaller head in proportion to the body, shorter baleen 

 (scarcely more than half the length), a differently shaped 

 contour of the upper margin of the lower lip, and a greater 

 number of vertebrae. Animals of this group closely resembling 

 each other have been found abundantly in the temperate seas 

 of both hemispheres, North Atlantic and North Pacific (where 

 they are regularly hunted by the Japanese), and in the 



FIG. 10. 



neighbourhood of the Cape of Good Hope, Kerguelen's Island, 

 Australia, and New Zealand, but according to Captain Maury's 

 charts they are never or rarely seen in the tropical seas. It is 

 chiefly this supposed isolation of distribution rather than any 

 constant distinctive characters which has given rise to the 

 idea that the North Atlantic whale (called Balcena liscayensis), 

 the Japanese (B. japonica), the Cape whale (B. australis), and 

 the New Zealand whale (B. antipodarum), must be of different 

 species. Until more numerous specimens of skeletons are 

 procured for our museums, or more accurate descriptions can 

 be obtained, the question cannot be satisfactorily determined. 



The whalebone whales, not called right whales, are (1) the 

 humpback (Megaptera), or " hunchback " (Fig. 11), so called by 

 whalers on account of the low hump-like form of the dorsal 

 fin. In Dudley's account of the whales of the New England 

 coast (Phil Trans. 1725), the fourth species is " The bunch 



