1873.] DR. J. E. GRAY ON NEW-ZEALAND WHALES. 133 



flat. There is no doubt that this bone is in progress of development ; 

 for the terminal edge is very thick and truncated. (See fig. 4, p. 140.) 



The history of the New-Zealand Right Whales is an instructive 

 lesson to the zoologist, and shows how apt we are to trust' to an 

 assumption. 



The older circumnavigators, as Capt. Cook and others, spoke of a 

 Right Whale being observed near New Zealand. Dr. Dieffenbach 

 brought home with him a beautiful drawing of a Right Whale, made 

 from a female specimen 60 feet long taken on the coast of New Zea- 

 land, in Jackson's Bay. I published a reduced copy of this drawing 

 in his work on New Zealand under the name of Balcena antipodarum, 

 and a plate in the • Voyage of the Erebus and Terror ' under the 

 name of Balcena antarctica, a name which had been already used 

 for another species by Lesson and Owen. 



Mr. Stuart presented to the Museum the ear-bone of a Whale 

 from Otago, which I described and figured in the P.Z. S. 1864, p. 202, 

 under the name of Caperea. This figure is copied in the ' Catalogue 

 of Seals and Whales,' p. 101, f. 9 ; and believing that there was only 

 one Right Whale in New Zealand, I regarded it as the ear-bone of 

 the Whale I had figured, and called it Caperea antipodarum*. 



The skeleton of an adult female Whale, obtained by Capt. Berard 

 in the Bay of Acaroa, near Banks Island, in New Zealand, was pre- 

 sented to the Paris Museum. According to M. van Beneden it was 

 for a long time kept in the warehouse of the Institution, and regarded 

 as of the same species as the Balcena australis brought from the 

 Cape of Good Hope by Lalande ; and M. Laurillard was so persuaded 

 of its identity that he offered to exchange it with M. Eschricht for 

 the skeleton of a Greenland Whale (Ost. Ce't. p. 46). It is exhibited 

 in the court of the Museum of Comparative Anatomy in the Jardin 

 des Plantes, and named B. australis. Prof. Lilljeborg, who was in 

 Paris in 1863, says that the specimen was not set up ; but it has since 

 (1865) been mounted, according to Mr. Flower. Prof. Lilljeborg, 

 in a letter to me, printed in the additions to the 'Catalogue of 

 Seals and Whales,' observes that " it is quite different from the B. 

 australis of Desmoulins and Cuvier, from the Cape, and is, without 

 doubt, the Eubalcena antipodarum of Gray. The blade-bone is of 

 very distinct form, and has the rudiment of an acromion. The ear- 

 bones are lost," — one of these being the single bone upon which the 

 genus and species were established. 



M. van Beneden, who speaks of this skeleton as complete, in the 

 ' Osteographie des Cetaces,' adopts Lilljeborg's determination, and 

 figures several bones, no doubt taken from the specimen in the 

 Jardin des Plantes, under the name of Balcena antipodarum, not 

 saying a word as to the skeleton being without the ear-bones, but 

 giving three figures of two ear-bones, evidently derived from other 

 sources. He says he has seen several ear-bones of this species, and 

 that they are all alike. He also says there are three ear-bones in 

 the Museum of Brussels (one of them being young), brought from 



* Dr. Hector has now determined that this ear-bone belongs to Neobaleena 

 ■marginata (Ann. & Mag. Nat. Hist. 1873, vol. xi. p. 108). 



