56 Seeley— Fossil Whale. 
measure but 2 of an inch across in front, yet each expands behind 
like a Srame | into an oval form, which is at the third vertebra 
2 inches high, by 14 inches wide. In the axis it is but a perforation 
and excavation in a posterior bony expansion of the sides, but the 
ares to the third and fourth vertebra are slender bony rings : that of 
the fourth is most slender, and more contracted than in the other. 
They rise at the base of the neural arches, and terminate in the same 
plane as the bases of the centra, being there a little compressed 
laterally. 
The neural arches are very simple; flattened above, they are 
concave at the sides, project slightly in front and behind, and are 
from } to 3 of an inch thick. There has been a slight neural spine 
to the | axis, but it is rubbed away. 
The sum of the features here described indicate, not a 
Cetacean of the Dolphin family, but a true Whale. The 
characters which more especially mark this are—the size and 
position of the passages for the vertebral arteries; the absence 
of neural spines, though in Phocena they are no more de- 
veloped; the relative depth of the vertebre, and the position 
of the ‘dentata.’ There are some points of resemblance to 
Dolphins; but with Balenoptera the affinity is singularly 
close ; and it is chiefly from the funnel-shaped artery-passages 
opening on the axis by a minute perforation that it is dis- 
tinguished. Other distinctive characters are that in Baleno- 
ptera the ‘ dentata’ is at the base of the spinal cord; that the 
vertebra do not so rapidly decrease in size; that the processes 
are relatively larger ; that only the neural arches of the second 
and third are anchylosed, and that the vertebral arcs do not form 
rings. None of these characters are very important, but the 
sum of them will justify a separation of the old Oolitic fossil 
from its living ally; and, as an old true Whale, I have named 
it Paleocetus.* 
EXPLANATION OF PLATE II. 
Fig. 1. Front view of the ‘ axis’ of Paleocetus Sedgwicki; half natural size. 
2. Under view of 2nd, 3rd, and 4th cervical vertebrae of P. Sedgwicki ; 
half natural size. 
(The figures are from Photographs by W. Farren, Cambridge.) 
Nore.—In Mr. Woodward’s paper on Plicatula sigillina, Gro- 
LOGICAL MAGaAzine, vol. i. p. 114, there is an error relating to this 
Whale. ‘The fossil figured by Professor Owen in the ‘ British Fossil 
* While this was printing, I have been indebted to Dr. Gray for his memoir on 
British Cetacea; and am able to add thatit also resembles Physalus, being 
nearest to Ph. Sibbaldii (Gray): 1m which the lateral processes of the axis re- 
semble those of the fossil more closely than those in Balenoptera do; but after 
the second, they do not form rings, in that species, while Physalus has all the ver- 
tebre free. Paleocetus appears to connect these two genera. 
