FAMILY BALjENID.E. 
131 
Dimensions. Total length eighteen feet. From the posterior fold of the swimming paw to 
the notch in the middle of the tail, eleven feet six inches. Girth at the swimming paws thir¬ 
teen feet. Tail seventeen inches deep, and four feet nine inches across from tip to tip. 
I had no opportunity of determining its sex, but was informed that it was a female. 
The above description was taken from a whale captured in the lower bay of New-York 
in 1822. 
THE NORTHERN RORQUAL. 
RorUUALUS BOREALIS. 
Balcena tripinnis maxilla inferiore rotunda. Sibbald, Phalainologia, Tab. 3. 
Balasna boops , Lac6pede. Mitchill, Med. Repos. Vol. 7, p. 41G. 
Broad-nosed Whale. Scoresby. 
Rorqualus borealis. Knox, Nat. Libr. Vol. 6, p. 125, pi. 5. 
Characteristics. Baleen divided into four or five thousand plates. Larger than the preceding. 
Vertebral 65. Length 50 - 105 feet. 
Description. Body not cylindrical, but compressed on the sides, and angular on the back. 
Head smaller than in Balcena. Dorsal elevation very small, triangular, opposite to the vent. 
Swimming paws placed far back, long, slender, and pointed at the tips. Baleen 314 plates 
on each side, extending about fifteen inches, and succeeded by a great number of smaller plates, 
gradually changing to bristles. Vertebrae 65. The largest vertebrae are 14 inches in the 
diameter of their bodies, and from 6-7 feet from tip to tip of their transverse processes. 
Color. Uniform black above, light beneath. Folds pale white, occasionally reddish. 
These two species resemble each other so much as to have been confounded together, until 
the careful examination and comparison of tw T o recent specimens enabled Dr. Knox to establish 
their specific differences. The species is introduced here upon the authority of Dr. Mitchill, 
who has furnished a very brief notice of a large whale exhibited in New-York in 1804. It 
grounded, and was captured near Reedy Island in the Delaware. The following is all the 
information furnished : “ Length 38 feet; circumference 18 feet; expanse of the jaws at the 
“ extremity, 8 feet. No teeth in either jaw. Whalebone one to two feet long in the upper 
“ jaw, of a grey hairy appearance.” This is very meagre, but is enough to indicate that it 
should probably be referred to the above species. That it was clearly not the young of the 
Right Whale, R. mysticetus, is manifest from the absence of a dorsal elevation, which led 
Mitchill to refer it to the B. boops; while its size and the peculiar appearance of the baleen, 
would lead us to arrange it under the present species. It was a young individual. 
( EXTRA-LIMI TA L.) 
Rorqualis australis. In 1837, the skull of a large whale was exhibited in New-York, under the im¬ 
posing name of “Fossil Head of the Sea Serpent.” It was reported to have been dug up near the 
Balize, Louisiana, and was in the condition of a graveyard bone. It had been probably stranded, 
