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



ing some distance up the sides. Sometimes it is pied below and the 

 amount of white is very variable, and sometimes, again, pure black speci- 

 mens are killed, showing no white at all. The line between the color is 

 always sharply defined, although the dividing line is very irregular. There 

 is no shading through the skin to the pink blubber, whether the color be 

 black or white. The white-bellied whales yield the most oil and they usually 

 have a patch of white on the tip of each fluke, so that if only the flukes are 

 seen as the whale goes down the fishermen can often tell whether or not it is 

 a white-belly that they are pursuing" (/. c., p. 7). Mr. Andrews (antea, 

 pp. 172, 174) refers to white spots on one of the Amagansett whales observed 

 by him, and quotes Captain J. B. Edwards, an old whaleman of Amagansett, 

 as stating: "I have seen several Right Whales with white markings or spots 

 on the sides, and some with the breast and throat nearly all white." Guld- 

 berg refers also to the occurrence of white spots on the Iceland specimens 

 captured by Captain Berg. Hence it is evident that specimens of this spe- 

 cies showing more or less white are not peculiar to any particular locality; 

 that the amount of white present may vary in amount from a few small 

 spots to large areas, occupying considerable portions of the ventral surface ; 

 and that, when present, they are not superficial but involve the whole thick- 

 ness of the skin down to the pink blubber. 



PROVINCETOWN SPECIMEN. 



This, when studied, was a partly disarticulated skeleton, sex not recorded, 

 of a specimen secured at Provincetown, Mass., for the Museum of Com- 

 parative Zoology in April, 1864. l According to Captain Atwood, 2 one of its 

 captors, it yielded 80 barrels of oil, and the whalebone was sold for $1,000. 

 The length in the flesh is said to have been 48 feet. 3 The skull is* shown 

 in profile (Plate XIX), from above (Plate XX), and from behind (Plate XXI, 

 fig. A). The principal dimensions are as follows : 



Measurements of the Skull. 



mm. 



Total length, axial, from occip. condyles to tip of intermax. 3650 



" following curvature 4500 



] Van Beneden, in referring to this specimen (Bull. Acad. Roy. de Belgique (2), XXX, 

 1870, p. 385) erroneously conjectured it was captured in summer. 



2 Cf. Allen, Bull. Mus. Com. Zool. I, No. 8, 1869, p. 202. 



3 On the authority of Prdf. W. H. Niles of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who 

 was in charge of the preparation of the skeleton, he then being a student at the Museum of 

 Comparative Zoology. According to information recently received from my friend Mr. James 

 Henry Blake, this whale was captured in Massachusetts Bay, near the Plymouth shore, and 

 towed into Provincetown harbor. Tne skeleton remained many years at the Museum before 

 it was mounted (in 1888) and placed on exhibition. The original whalebone was sold, as 

 stated above, for $1000 at the time the specimen was captured, and that now attached to the 

 skull is a clever restoration, hardly distinguishable on casual inspection from the original. 

 Mr. Blake gives the length of the animal in the flesh as 47 feet, and the yield of oil as 83 

 barrels and 14 gallons. Some of the whalebone was seven feet in length. 



