Distribution of the Balgenidae. 245 



coast of Maryland. Three have come under mj notice — one 

 taken opposite this city three years ago, one cast ashore in 

 Rehoboth Bay, Deh, and one in Molzach Bay, Va." 



B, jai^onica. — I am not aware if any bones or other remains 

 of this species are to be found in any European museum, except 

 the whalebone that is imported under the name of ^' northwest- 

 coast whalebone," meaning thereby that of the whales of the 

 north-west coast of America. I first brought this whalebone 

 under the notice of zoologists in the '• Zoology of the Erebus 

 and Terror.' There is no doubt that an extensive whale- 

 fishery is carried on by the Japanese, from the works they 

 have published on the subject ; and it is very probable that 

 the whalebone imported as north-w^est whalebone may be the 

 same as that obtained by the Japanese ; but we have no means 

 of determining this point, as I have never been able to procure 

 any whalebone imported from Japan. This is probably what 

 the whalers call the Kanitschatka or North-west Whale, which 

 they say is very difi^erent from the whale of Behring's Straits 

 and Baffin's Bay {Whale-Charts, p. 255). 



B. australis. — This species is only known from two skele- 

 tons brought from the Cape of Good Hope by M. Delalande, 

 now in Paris, and some bones, sent from the Cape, in the 

 British Museum ; but we have no material to determine what 

 is the species of whale that inhabits the vicinity of the Falkland 

 Islands and the east coast of South America. 



It is supposed that the whalebone sold in London as the 

 " South-Sea whalebone" is the baleen of this species ; but I am 

 informed that that kind of whalebone is collected by the ships 

 that fish in the great southern oceans ; and there certainly is 

 found a second most distinct species of Right Wliale near the 

 Cape of Good Hope. A very fine skull of an adult and a 

 nearly complete skeleton of a young individual, both obtained 

 from the Cape of Good Hope by Dr. Horstock, are contained 

 in the Leyden Museum. These are briefly described by 

 Schlegel, in his ' Abhandlungen aus dem Gebiete der Zoologie,' 

 part 1, p. 137, as i?, mysticetus australis', and I have named 

 them Hunterius TemmincMi (Cat. of Seals and Whales in 

 British Museum, p. 98). M. Van Beneden entirely overlooks 

 this species in his distribution of the Wliales in his chart. 



Balcena antipodarum is only known to zoologists from a 

 drawing by Dieffenbach and a skeleton in the Paris Museum 

 which was obtained in New Zealand. Dieifenbach gives some 

 account of the migration of this species, but he gives no au- 

 thority for extending its geographical distribution to the west 

 coast of South America. I have never seen any whalebone 

 said to have come from New Zealand, though Dieffenbach says 



