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



the whale of Tarento was identical with that captured in 1862 in Delaware 

 Bay opposite Philadelphia, and upon which Mr. E. [D.] Cope published a 

 very brief osteological report in the year 1865. Both the Tarento w r hale and 

 that of Philadelphia belong to the species Balcena biscayensis, Eschricht, 

 which for several centuries was pursued with avidity, and, I was going to 

 say, exterminated, throughout the temperate region of the North Atlantic, 

 first by the Basques, and then successively by the Saintongeois, -the Nor- 

 mans, the Dutch (who called it Nordkaper), the Danes, Norwegians, 

 English, and Americans." 



In 1879, Dr. Gasco gave also a detailed description of the skeleton of the 

 San Sebastian Whale, 2 just a quarter of a century after the capture of the 

 animal, and after it had rested twenty-one years in the Museum of Copen- 

 hagen. Of the thirty-six pages occupied by this memoir ten are devoted to 

 a historical summary of the so-called "Balcena biscayensis, Eschricht," six 

 to the history and external characters of the San Sebastian specimen, and 

 the remaining twenty to its osteology. Dr. Gasco gave the number of pairs 

 of ribs as thirteen (not fifteen as stated by Gray and Fischer), and described 

 the bifidity of the first rib as very slight, the sinus amounting to 55 mm. in 

 the left and only 15 mm. in the right. This slight bifidity, he conjectured, 

 might at a later stage of life, have become much lessened or have wholly 

 disappeared. He affirmed the unquestionable specific identity of the San 

 Sebastian and Taranto whales, and quotes a statement made to him verbally 

 by Professor Cope, after the latter had seen the Taranto specimen, to the 

 effect that this agreed exactly with the Philadelphia specimen described by 

 nim under the name Balcena cisarctica. Although there was previously 

 every probability in favor of this conclusion, this may be reasonably taken 

 as negatively settling the conjectures of the specific diversity of B. biscaycnsw 

 and B. cisarctica raised by Gray and Fisher. Also that the bifidity of the 

 first rib, which had for a decade figured so prominently in the references to 

 this specimen, and had been accorded so much importance in the writings 

 of Gray, Fischer, and others, is in all probability only an individual peculi- 

 arity, such as is often met with in the skeletons of many well-known animals. 3 



Holder, 1883. In 1883, the late Dr. J. B. Holder, curator of Zoology 

 at this Museum, published an important contribution to the technical 



1 From a summary of his conclusions, entitled 'La Balcena (Macleayius} australiensis du 

 Muse"e de Paris, compared a la Balcena biscayensis de I'Universite" de Naples,' published in 

 Compt. rend. Acad. Sci. Paris, LXXXVII, Sept. 9, 1878, pp. 410-412, as translated and repub- 

 lished in Ann. and Mag. Nat. Hist., 5th ser., II, Dec., 1878, pp. 495-497. 



Van Beneden, in commenting on a letter received by him from Capellini, 'Un mot sur une 

 Baleine captured dans la Mediterrane"e, in Bull. Acad. roy. de Belgique, 2e ser., XLIII, 1877, 

 pp. 741-745), also referred Capellini's Balcena tarentina to B. biscayensis. 



2 II Balenotta catturato nel 1854 a San Sebastiano (Spagna) (Balcena biscayensis, Eschricht) 

 per la prima volt a descritto dal Dr. Francesco Gasco, Professore di Zoologia e Anatomia com- 

 parata nella R. Universita di Geneva. Ann. del Mus. civ. di stor. nat. di Genova, XIV, 1879, 

 pp. 573-608. 



3 CJ. footnote on p. 298. 



