NOTE ON A HUMERUS OF A BAL^NOPTEEA PHYSALUS— GEEAT 

 RORQUAL WHALE— FOUND AT PORT HOLLAND. 



Bt HAMILTON JAM^S— Member. 



The Bone wliich I have the honour of bringing under your 

 notice, was found on the beach at Port Holland, in this county, 

 the twenty-fifth day of October, 1880, about twenty fathoms 

 below high water mark, on a day succeeding that on which a 

 violent disturbance of the sea off that coast occurred, which 

 circumstance was considered to be of sufficient importance to be 

 reported to me at the time by a fisherman of the district as 

 being unusually violent ; during that night several hundred tons 

 of cliff fell there, and the spot where this bone was picked up 

 was just beyond the debris of this fallen cliff and the then 

 receding waves which were supposed to have washed it ; there 

 can be little doubt, however, but that this commotion in the 

 waters of the previous day disturbed it from its ocean bed in 

 the submerged forest known to exist off that coast. 



It was at once seen to be the bone of a Mammal, and 

 subsequent investigation proves it to be the humerus of the 

 great Rorqual or razor-back whale, the largest of the Cetacea, 

 as well as the largest animated being known to have lived on 

 this planet. 



Mr. Matthias Dunn has submitted the photograph of it to Dr. 

 Francis Day, H. M. inspector of fisheries for India, who has 

 shown it to Professor Flower, who has just been delivering a 

 course of lectures on the Cetacea at the College of Surgeons ; 

 they confirm this opinion, and professor Hunt has found two 

 engravings in a Belgian work so like that they might have been 

 drawn from this identical bone. 



It weighed fifty-three pounds, and is twenty inches in length, 

 being thirty-nine inches in circumference in its broadest part , 

 and probably was originally longer, and is always an interesting- 

 part of the whale, from the continuation of the pectoral fin^ 

 which is developed internally precisely corresponding to the arm 

 and hand of man ; this is one of the most interesting joints in 

 our system, and you will recognise the resemblance at the large 



