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



B. australis Desm. To the latter are apparently referred not only all of the 

 existing species of Right Whales except the Arctic or Greenland Right Whale, 

 but several fossil species, including Gray's Macleayius britannicus 1 or, as 

 called later, Halibalcena britannica, 2 from the Lyme Regis of England. This 

 extreme conservatism also characterized his notice of this group of animals 

 in 1891, 3 where of Balcena australis it is said: "This form inhabits the 

 temperate seas of both northern and southern hemispheres, and is divided 

 into several so-called species according to their geographical distribution : 

 B. Biscay ensis of the North Atlantic, B. japonica of the North Pacific, B. aus- 

 tralis of the South Atlantic, and B. antipodarum and B. novw-zelandice of the 

 South Pacific" (/. c., p. 239). This view is perhaps naturally reflected in 

 the writings of later British compilers of popular works on natural history, 

 although in opposition to the opinion of all modern cetological authorities. 



Contributions of Guldberg, 1884-1893. In 1884, G. A. Guidberg 

 published a note 4 on the former distribution and migrations of "Bal&na 

 biscayensis Eschricht," announcing the discovery by him of its bones on the 

 shores of Finmark, left there by the Dutch whalers of the sixteenth century, 

 and of evidence of its reappearance in numbers along the coast of Norway; 

 and also a more extended paper on the same subject, 5 in which part of a 

 skull and various other bones, found on a small island off the coast of Fin- 

 mark, are described. A further contribution was made by this author in 

 1891, 6 giving an account of specimens captured during the nineteenth cen- 

 tury, including new records for Norway (1889) and Iceland (1890, 1891), 

 and measurements, etc., based on this new material. An article of twenty 

 pages by the same author also appeared in 1893, 7 containing about eight 

 pages of historical observations, followed by descriptions and figures (the 

 latter from photographs received from Captain M. Berg) of the external 

 characters (pi. i), and an account of its osteology, including the pelvic bones 

 and pelvic limb (pi. ii), based on Iceland specimens. Eubalcena is recog- 

 nized as generically distinct from Balcena, with four species: (1) E. bis- 

 cayensis, of the North Atlantic; (2) E. australis, of the South Atlantic; (3) 

 E. japonica, of the North Pacific; and (4) E. antipodarum, of the South 

 Pacific (1. c., p. 18). 



Van Beneden, 1885. In 1885, Van Beneden, in a paper on the Cetacea 



1 Ann. and Mag. Nat. Hist., 4th ser., VT, 1870, p. 204. 



2 Gray, Proc. Zool. Soc, London, 1873, pp. 140-142, fig. 5. 



3 Mammals, Living and Extinct. By William Henry Flower and Richard Lydekker. 8vo. 

 London, 1891. 



* Nature, XXX, 1884, pp. 148, 149. 



5 Sur la presence, aux temps anciens et modernes, de la Baleine de Biscaye (ou Nordkaper) 

 sur les cotes de Norwege. Bull. Acad. roy. de Belgique, 3e s<5r., VII, 1884. pp. 374-402. 



6 Bidrag til noeiere kunskab om Atlanterhavets rethval, Eubalcena biscayensis, Eschricht. 

 Chnstiania Vidensk.-Selsk. Forhandl., 1891, No. 8, pp. 1-14. 



7 Zur Kenntniss des Nordkapers. (Eubalcena biscayensis Eschr.). Zool Jahrb , Abth. 

 fur Syst., VII, May 20, 1893, pp. 1-20, pll. i and ii. 



