156 Dr.J. E. Gray on the Skull of Balena marginata. 
front; the lower edge inflexed in front, the rest of the edge 
being sim mple. The baleen elongate, slender, several times 
as long as broad, with a fringe of a single series of fine fibres; 
enamelled surface smooth and polished, “thick. 
Neobalæna marginata. 
Ta marginata, Gray, Cat. Seals & Whales Brit. Mus. p. 90; Hector, 
Trans. of the New-Zealand Institute, 1869, t. 2b. f. 14; Ann. 
& & Mas. Nat. Hist. 1870, vol. v. p. 221. 
Hab. New Zealand. 
This is Dry e as showing that the true Balena or 
Right Whale of the Di orth Sea and that of the South Sea are 
each a peculiar genu 
The width A cán form of the beak of the skull is 
somewhat like the beak of some of the Finner Whales; but 
it does not at all justify Mr. Knox's idea that Balena margi- 
nata is a Finner. But this difference of skull makes us more 
aous to have the description of the entire animal and its 
skeleton, as the animal may prove to be the type of a new 
family of Whales, between the true Whales and Finners. 
This pigmy whale, which is not more than 15 or 16 feet 
long, is a representative in the Southern Ocean of the gigantic 
Right Whale of the Greenland seas. It has the most beau- 
tiful, the most flexible, most elastic, T the toughest whale- 
bone or baleen yet discovered ; an it were of larger size, 
it would fetch a much higher price dian the whalebone of the 
Greenland whale, the latter being three or four times the 
value of the brittle coarse whalebone of the Eubalena or Right 
Whales of the Southern and Pacific Oceans. The trade of the 
Continental nations being chiefly confined to their colonies, or 
their merchants obtaining the whalebone that is used in their 
manufactures second-hand, there are not in the market the va- 
ate of whalebone and finner-bone which we have in this 
where the studs bone and finner-bone from different 
distinguishing the genera and bor, It has been a fertile 
subject of reproach to me that I established some species on 
the characters afforded by this substance; but I need only 
quote, as a proof of the little attention M. Gervais has paid to 
this part of my work, that, in his book on the anatomy of 
whales, now in progress, after saying that I have established 
