1869.] OF THE COMMON FIN-WHALE. 605 
surements and drawings of various parts put together, as the animal 
when lying dead on the beach, flattened and distorted by its own 
weight, or inflated by the liberation of gases within its cavities, can 
give but little idea of its appearance when swimming in its native 
element. Hence there are considerable discrepancies between the 
most reliable of the figures we possess even of the most common 
species*, 
The exact length in a straight line, from the front of the lower 
jaw (which projected about 18 inches beyond the muzzle) to the 
middle of the tail, was 61 feet, or 6 feet less than the Pevensey 
Whale, and | foot more than a Whale of the same species and sex 
(male) taken in the Thames in 1859, and which, as shown by the 
condition of the bones, now in the Rosherville Gardens, was fully 
adult. From the end of the muzzle to the axilla was 19 feet 10 inches ; 
from the same part to the middle of the eye 12 feet, to the hinder 
border of the dorsal fin 45 feet 6 inches. The dorsal fin rose gra- 
dually in front, with a convex border, to a vertical height of 1 foot 
3 inches, the apex was short and recurved, the posterior border 
hollowed ; the base was rather more than 2 feet in length. The 
flukes of the tail (Plate XLVII. fig. 3) measured 11 feet across, and 
2 feet 10 inches from before backwards near the middle line. As 
in the Pevensey Whale, the right was markedly convex, and the left 
concave, on the upper surface, giving the characteristic screw-like 
form to the main organ of propulsion. 
The terminal portion of the trunk, between the dorsal fin and the 
flukes of the tail, was, as usual in the species, strongly compressed, 
of great and nearly uniform vertical depth (4 feet), and sharply 
ridged above and below. 
The pectoral fins, measured from the axilla to the tip, were 
5 feet 4 inches long, and 1 foot 7 inches in greatest breadth, which 
was about midway between those points. Towards the tip the upper 
or ulnar border was somewhat excavated. The tip was rather sharply 
pointed. 
The upper surface of the head was on the whole remarkably flat ; 
but immediately in front of the blow-holes a strong median ridge 
rose rather abruptly, then gradually subsided to about midway be- 
* The most authentic representations of the external characters of the Whale 
under consideration with which I am acquainted are :— 
1. From a specimen, 45 feet long, stranded in 1825 on the west coast of Riigen. 
Figured in ‘Hinige Naturhistor. Bemerk. iiber die Walle,’ by F. Rosenthal. 
Griefswald, 1827. (Called Balena rostrata, var. major.) 
2. From an animal, 51 feet long, stranded on the coast of Holland. Schlegel, 
Abhand. a. d. Gebiete der Zoologie, Heft i. pl. 6, 1841. (Called Balena suleata 
arctica.) 
3. From an animal, 40 feet long, stranded near Katwijk, in Holland, in 1841. 
Ibid. Heft ii. pl. 9, 1845. (Called Balenoptera arctica.) 
4. From an animal, 50 feet long, stranded in the Orkney Isles, 1856. R. 
Heddle, Proc. Zool. Soc. 1856, pls. xxiv. and xy. (Called Physalus duguidii.) 
5. From an animal, 403 feet long, stranded on the Lofoden Islands. (Called 
Balenoptera musculus.) G. O. Sars, Vid-Selskab. Forhand. Christiania, 1865. 
The various names assigned to these specimens by their respective describers 
illustrate the difficulties of the nomenclature of this group. 
