WHALEBONE WHALES. 19 
larger dimensions, and is believed to have a few more vertebre in the back- 
bone. 
Rudolphi’s Fin- The next species in point of size is Rudolphi’s fin-whale (B. 
Whale. —_ borealis), which attains a length of from 40 to 45, or occasionally as 
much as 52 feet. In colour it is bluish-black above, with oblong white spots, 
while the under-parts are more or less white; the under-surface of the flukes, as 
well as both sides of the flippers are, however, coloured like the back. The 
back-fin is smaller, and placed further back than in the lesser finner: while the 




















































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































THE LESSER FIN-WHALE (7; lat. size). 
flippers are very small, equalling only one-fourteenth of the total length. There 
are thirteen pairs of ribs; and the whalebone is black. 
This species is much rarer than the other rorquals, and does not appear to have 
been recorded from the Pacific. It ranges as far south as Biarritz, and migrates 
northward in summer as far as the North Cape ; and either this or a closely-allied 
species occurs in the seas around Java. Of specimens recorded from the British 
Islands, the first was stranded on the shores of the Firth of Forth in 1872; the 
second was caught in the river Crouch, in Essex, in 1883, a third in 1884 in the 
Humber, a fourth in the Thames at Tilbury in 1887, and a fifth in the Medway in 
1888. On the coasts of Finmark the numbers of this whale are very variable, and 
while it is a constant summer visitor on the Western seas, it only occasionally 
