CERVICAL VERTEBK^ OF A GIGANTIC BLUE WHALE. 1085 



55. Cervical Vertebraj of a Gigantic Blue Whale from 

 Panama. By Sir Sidney F. Harmer, K.B.E., Sc.D., 

 V.P.R.S., F.Z.S. 



[Received November 19, 1923 ; Read November 20, 1923.] 

 (Text-figure 1.) 



The bones under consideration (which were exhibited) were 

 the second and third cervical A-ertebrte of a Bine Whale (Balce- 

 noptera muscnlns L.), and had been presented to the British 

 Museum (Natural History) by Mr. F. A. Mitchell-Hedges, who 

 had given the following account of their history : — The whale 

 entered the harbour at Cristobal, the northern entiance to the 

 Panama Canal, in January 1922. It passed up the canal towards 

 the first locks at Gatun, and having become a menace to shipping, 

 it was killed with machine-guns. It was towed by tugs to the 

 Cristobal docks, where unsuccessful eflbrts to raise it from the 

 Avater Avero made with powerful 75-ton cranes. It is said to 

 have been carefully measured, at this stage, as having a length 

 of 98 feet, and its Aveight Avas estimated at 100 tons. It Avas 

 later towed out to sea, but it drifted ashore again, and after 

 having been towed out once more, it Avas bombed from the air 

 by United States army planes. Parts of the carcass subse- 

 quently came ashore at Santa Isabel, between Nombre de Dios 

 and Cape San Bias, Avhere the v^ertebrae Avere found by Mr. 

 Mitchell -Hedges. 



The specimen is of special interest from several points of 

 vieAV. The Blue Whale is commonly considered an ice-loving 

 species, and it Iihs been foiind in large n\mibers on the fringe of 

 the Arctic and Antarctic ice. Although it is knoAvn to travel 

 considerable distances from the poles, as shoAvn by its fi-equent 

 capture by Avhaling companies o& the Finmark, Newfoundland, 

 and South African coasts, records of its occurrence in or near the 

 Tropics are rare. In his memoir, " The Whalebone Whales 

 of NeAV England'"'*, Mr. Glover M. Allen states that the Blue 

 Whale is essentially a *' cold-water " species, and that New 

 Jei-sey " perhaps represents nearly the normal southAvard limit " 

 on the Atlantic coast, though it may eventually be found to . 

 folloAV the inshore waters as far south as the Carolina coast. The 

 specimen under consideration occurred in lat. 9° 30' N., and the 

 record is of importance as bearing on the possibility of a migration 

 across the equator of Blue Whales from the Northern Hemi- 

 sphere to the Southern, or vice versa. 



* Allen, G. M., Mem. Boston Soc. Nat. Hist. vol. viii. No. 2, p. 255 (1916). 



