296 Bulletin American Museum of Natural History. [Vol. XXIV, 



character of the work, as well as numerous special points, in the course of 

 which he again took up the subject of Balcena biscayensis. 1 He here resumes 

 his criticism of Van Beneden's former essay and map, already noticed, on 

 the distribution of the Right Whales, in which connection (pp. 196-200) 

 he takes occasion to give the history of Balcena biscayensis. After stating 

 that it, "as a zoological species, rests on very slender grounds," and alluding 

 to the whale-fisheries formerly prosecuted "in the Bay' of Biscay and in the 

 British Channel," he states:. . . ."but it is not proved that the Greenland 

 whale had not a more extended distribution than at present, after it has been 

 the object of capture for so many years, and, on the other hand, that the 

 specimens that wandered far away from the usual habitat of the species 

 would not become smaller, less fat, or more active than the others, which 

 were better fed. The same argument may explain the difference observed 

 by whalers in the size and form of the whales caught on the coast of Iceland 

 and the coast of Greenland. At the same time I would not deny that the 

 whales of this latter place may not be a different species; but as yet we have 

 not sufficient materials for separating and characterizing them" (7. c., p. 

 197). This would seem to imply that he ignored the existence of the species 

 he had himself formerly recognized provisionally under the name Balcena 

 biscayensis. He then alludes to the San Sebastian specimen taken " in 1834" 

 (lege, 1854), which he says "has been named Balcena biscayensis by Esch- 

 richt," and states that "he [Eschricht] thinks that he observed in the develop- 

 ment of the various parts of the skeleton a difference from that which he 

 had observed in the skeletons of Balcena mysticetus. But we must recollect 

 that this was to support a theory that the latter whale was exclusively con- 

 fined to the Polar seas and that the Right Whale of the North Atlantic must 

 be different" (/. c., p. 197). 



Apropos of this statement, the criticism he had visited upon the supposed 

 author of the "Mysticetes" of the ' Osteographie des CetaceV may well 

 be recalled in the present connection, namely: that there is shown "a very 

 limited knowledge of the subject." It is also regrettable that he did not 

 exhibit "a more philosophic spirit," and manifest a little deference to so 

 high an authority in cetology as Eschricht. His criticism of the Balcena 

 biscayensis of the 'Osteographie/ which, he states, is founded on what ap- 

 pears to him "to be very incongruous materials," is not, however, without 

 point, and his claim that "the only ground on which they are united is that 



1 The authorship of the portion of the work which had at this time appeared not having been 

 "iS ? ^* an , noun ced, Dr. Gray innocently assumed that the author of the part relating to the 

 Mysticetes was Germs, and poured upon him his vials of criticism, made the more sweeping 

 by including in a general way "previous short essays" of this author on the Cetacea, which are 

 referred to as showing a very limited knowledge of the subject. The mistake in respect to author- 

 ' wever ' soon ex P sed by its avowed author, Van Beneden, as will be presently 



