33 



parts, ill wliicli, while the animal was alive, the pelvic boiies 

 were suspended. Unfortunately, one-half nearly had been 

 carried away by the heavy seas wdiich dashed on the beach, 

 although enough remained in two bones of one side to prove 

 that the rudimentary pelvis of the sperm whale of the Pacific 

 Ocean is of much the same construction as that of the right 

 whale of the Southern Ocean, which, with that of the Cape 

 Eorqual, was examined at the Cape of Good Hope for 

 M. Cuvler, by M. de la Lande, as mentioned in the Oss. Foss. 

 vol. ix., p. 302. 



The situation of the bones of the pelvis, which are the only 

 vestiges of the hinder legs of ordinary mammals, marks the 

 place in the spinal column, from which these extremities, if they 

 had existed, would have been suspended. The development of 

 the V bones in Cetacea probably takes its origin in the total 

 abortion of the ordinary hinder extremities of other Mammalia. 



The pelvis in the sperm whale is not in immediate junction 

 with the spine, but suspended in the flesh at some distance from 

 it. The antepenultimate of the lumbar vertebra; in our Sydney 

 skeleton bears towards its extremity an impression which 

 probably serves for the attachment of the strong muscles that 

 support the bones of the pelvis. In the true wdiale of the 

 ^owihevn Oce^n {Balcena AustraUs),t\iQ pelvis is composed of 

 three pieces, a middle and two more slender ones, which are 

 articulated, one on eacli side of the former. So also it appears 

 to be with the sperm whale, except that what answers to the 

 middle bone of the true whale appears here to be composed of 

 two arched bones. Thus, in reality, there are four bones, two 

 on each side of the sperm whale, and they lie in the form of a 

 crescent, of which the convex part is directed forward. These 

 bones are situated in front of the anus, but are probably not 

 joined together by any true articulation. 



In Beale's Yorkshire whale, he describes a pelvis which is of 

 a very different structure from this. There, he says, the animal 

 had two broad, flat, irregular and quadrilateral bones, ossified at 

 their symphysis — a structure which approaches more to the 

 pelvis of the Cape Eorqual {Megaptera Foeslcop of Gray). 



D 



