INTRODUCTION. 13 



the Cetacea in his synopsis of the Mammalia Scotica, and in 1828 

 Dr John Fleming, in his History of British Animals, brought the 

 classification and characters of the Mammalia up to the knowledge 

 of that day. 



A great step in advance was made when Dr Robert Knox and 

 Mr Frederick J. Knox undertook the dissection of a Great Whale 

 stranded at North Berwick in October 1831. The whale, a male, 

 was 78 feet long, and was named by them the Balsena maximns 

 horealis or Great Northern Rorqual with integumentary folds. 

 It was fortunate that it came into the possession of so able a 

 practical and scientific anatomist as Robert Knox, by whom the 

 skeleton and many preparations in illustration of the anatomy of 

 the soft parts were preserved, and a description of the animal was 

 published. Specimens in illustration of the anatomy of other 

 whales he also obtained : for example, the Piked Whale or 

 Balxnoptera acuto-rostrata, the Greenland or Right Whale, a Dolphin 

 named Delphinus tnrsio, the Common Porpoise, and the Gangetic 

 Dolphin. To these were added the skeleton and soft parts of the 

 Dugong. The collection was arranged and exhibited as a Museum in 

 Edinburgh, and a descriptive catalogue of the specimens was published 

 by Mr Frederick J. Knox in 1838. It Avas unfortunate that, after 

 being on view for some years, the collection had to be dispersed ; but 

 Professor John Goodsir, who was then actively engaged in developing 

 the Anatomical Museum of the University, acquired a number of the 

 specimens which are recorded in the present Catalogue. The skeleton 

 of the Great Rorqual became the property of the City of Edinburgh, 

 and after being exhibited for a number of years in a building in the 

 now extinct Zoological Gardens, has found a permanent resting-place 

 in the Royal Scottish Museum. Professor Goodsir added to the 

 Anatomical Museum, from his own dissections, the skeleton and 

 many soft parts of a Hyperoodon stranded in 1845 at Alloa (Catalogue, 

 p. 81). He also prepared a number of dissections, many of which 

 illustrated the growth of the baleen plates, from a Rorqual, about 

 35 feet long, probably B. musculus ; and he procured from whaling 

 captains the skull of a well-grown B. mijsticetus, also the skeleton 

 of a younger animal, which, as well as the skeleton of Hyperoodon, 

 was not articulated until the collection was arranged by me in 1885 

 in the present Anatomical Museum of the University. 



My studies of the Cetacea began in 1867 with the dissection 

 of the Pilot Whale, Glohicephalus melas, one of a school which 

 visited the Firth of Forth in that year. My interest was in- 

 tensified when in 1869 a Great Rorqual, Baleenoptera sihhaldi, was 

 stranded at Longniddry ; the study of its anatomy occupied many 

 months of my time, and enabled me to identify it as the same 

 species as Knox's North Berwick Whale and Sibbald's Great 

 Rorqual stranded near Abercorn in 1692. Since then I have enjoyed 

 the opportunity of examining Bpt. musculus, horealis, and rostrata, 

 Physeter, Ziphius, Hyperoodon, Mesoplodon hidens and layardi, 

 Platanista, Monodon, Delphinapterus, Phocsena, Cephalorhynchus, 



