TWO AUSTRALASIAN BLUE WHALES 



WITH Special Reference to the Corvisart Bay Whale. 



By EDGAR R. WAITE, F.L.S., Director, South Australian Museum. 



(Plates xxi-xxvi.) 



I. THE OKARITO WHALE. 



In 1908, when in New Zealand, I was fortunate in having the opportunity 

 to examine and make some notes upon a large blue whale stranded on the 

 west coast of the South Island. Careful measurement showed the length, 

 from the tip of the snout to the notch in the tail, to be 87 feet exactly. The 

 skeleton was secured and mounted in the Canterbury Museum, of which 

 institution I then had charge. I claimed this specimen to be the largest 

 preserved in any museum, and, in consequence, considerable local correspon- 

 dence ensued, longer examples being said to exist in London, Paris, Copen- 

 hagen, and America. 



In order to put the questii_ui to a wider test, I iniblished a letter in 

 "Nature" (i), detailing the occurrence and asking that Directors of Museums 

 possessing the skeletons of large whales should furnish details of their size. 

 To this Mr. F. A. Lucas, Curator-in-Chief of the Brooklyn Institute of Arts 

 and Sciences, New York, very courteously replied (2) ; he mentioned that in 

 1903 he had measured a number of blue whales taken off the coast of New- 

 foundland, and of twenty-six so measured only six reached a length of 74 

 feet, the maxima of whicli were 74 feet 4 inches and 75 feet exactly. Mr. 

 Lucas added that if the projection of the lower jaw and the depth of the fork 

 of the flukes is included, a total length of nearly 80 feet is obtained as the length 

 of the longest specimen. Mr. Lucas also drew attention to the unreliability 

 of axial measurements obtained from mounted skeletons, as the thickness of 

 the inter-vertebral cartilage is invariably exceeded. 



As Beddard justly says (3)^ the most obvious character of the whale tribe 

 is their large and occasionally colossal bulk, and, in consequence, he might 

 have added, the temptation of exaggeration is correspondingly great and 



(1) Waite, Nature, Ixxix, 1908, p. 98. 



(2) Lucas. Nature, Ixxx, 1909, p. 105^ 



(3) Beddard, Book of Wales, 1900, p. 1. 



