1865.] DR. H. BURMEISTER ON A NEW WHALE.. 191 
“‘ Buenos Ayres, 22nd December, 1864. 
“TI now send you drawings of the Whale in the Buenos Ayres 
Museum, drawn by myself, and, as I believe, exact to nature. 
“Fig 1. The skull. We have two specimens—one complete, the 
other consisting only of the hinder part, without the jaws. In the 
former the upper jaws are no longer in position, but separated from 
the cranium, and therefore little importance can be attached to the 
width of the opening between the intermaxillary bones in the ante- 
rior part of the cleft between them ; it may be somewhat exaggerated. 
All the other parts are entirely exact from nature, and well preserved. 
‘Length of the intermaxillary, 7 feet 2 inches ; length of the max- 
illary, 7 feet ; length of the under jaw, 10 feet 2inches. Breadth of 
the frontal bones between the orbits, 5 feet; breadth of the vertex 
behind, 2 feet 8 inches. 
Bigs). 
Skull seen from above. 
«The baleen is entirely black, without any other colour. We have 
two kinds in the Museum—one 53 feet and the other 1 foot 8 inches 
in length. This last only may be from the Balenoptera; the other 
perhaps from a Balena, because it is much more slender and more 
fringed. 
“Comparing my drawing (fig. 1) with that of Cuvier from the Cape 
‘Balenoptera (Oss. Foss. pl. 26. fig. 2), you will find that the 
suture between the frontal bone and the parietal is situated much 
more towards the external part of the frontal bone, being in my skull 
exactly in the angle where both bones are united, and therefore not 
seen from above in my drawing. Another difference of the species 
is indicated by the longitudinal carina in the vertex of the Cape spe- 
cies, there being no trace of such carina in either of my specimens. 
‘* Unfortunately the tympanic bones are wanting in both, and I 
can tell you nothing of them. But the zygomatic bone is preserved, 
