888 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XX. No. 521. 



associated with it is highly desirable before it 

 can be stated that nectar at present ' goes to 

 waste.' E. Dwight Sanderson. 



New Hampshire College, 

 Durham, N. H., 

 December 6, 1904. 



ANENT GIZZARDS. 



Professor Eastman* expresses his willing- 

 ness ' to consign to birds the exclusive enjoy- 

 ment of gizzards and feathers ' ; but this seems 

 hardly fair to certain fishes. According to 

 Giintherf in the well-known gray mullets 

 {Mugil) " the second portion of the stomach 

 reminds one of the stomach of birds; it * * * 

 is globular, and surrounded by an exceedingly 

 strong muscle. This muscle is not divided 

 into two as in birds, but [is] of great thick- 

 ness in the whole circumference of the 

 stomach, all the muscular fasciculi being cir- 

 cularly arranged. The internal cavity of this 

 stomach is rather small, and coated with a 

 tough epithelium * * *. A low circular valye 

 forms a pylorus." Certainly one can not carp 

 at Drs. Jordan and Evermann:); for referring ■ 

 to this apparatus as ' gizzard-like,' with which 

 adjective Mr. Barnum Brown contented him- 

 self when writing of the plesiosaurs. 



The food of the mullets is said§ to consist 

 ' chiefly of the organic substances mixed with 

 mud or sand,' of which they ' take in a quan- 

 tity.' However, it must also be set down that 

 ' in order to prevent larger bodies from pass- 

 ing into the stomach * * * these fishes have 

 the organs of the pharynx modified into a 

 filtering apparatus ' so that ' stomach stones ' 

 if present, can never be large. At all events 

 (to state the obvious conclusion) if two such 

 widely separated vertebrates as Gallus and 

 Mugil have independently evolved gizzard-like 

 modifications of the stomach, why should a 

 similar possibility be denied a firiori to all 

 Teptiles? But whether plesiosaurs were 



* Science, N. S., Vol. XX., October 7, 1904, p. 

 466. 



t ' An Introduetion to the Study of Fishes,' p. 

 503. 



t ' The Fishes of North and Middle America,' 

 Part I., p. 809. 



§ Giinther, op. cit., p. 502. 



' lithophagi ' or lotus eaters Herodotus saith 

 not., 



W. K. Gregory. 

 American Museum of Natural History. 



note on three very large beaked whales 

 from the north pacific. 



To the J^ditor of Science: Early in No- 

 vember last, I received a letter from President 

 D. S. Jordan, of the Leland Stanford, Jr., 

 University, enclosing a communication from 

 Mr. J. H. King, of Ferndale, Humboldt 

 County, California, relative to the stranding 

 of a whale about forty-one feet long near that 

 place. Mr. Ring's letter was accompanied by 

 photographs which made it evident that the 

 animal was one of the ziphioid or beaked 

 whales, of extraordinary size and not in a very 

 good state of preservation. I have recently 

 received additional information from Mr. 

 Ring which makes it certain that the whale 

 belongs to the genus Berardius. This genus 

 was first recognized as belonging to the fauna 

 of the North Pacific by Dr. Stejneger, who 

 found a skull on Bering Island in 1882, and, 

 believing it to represent a new species, gave it 

 the name of Berardius iairdii. Whether the 

 Ferndale specimen is of that species can not 

 be determined until the skull has been ex- 

 amined. 



The specimen is notable as being, so far 

 as I am aware, the first of the genus reported 

 from the Pacific coast of the United States, 

 and further as being the largest beaked whale 

 of which there is any record. In Mr. Ring's 

 second letter, he informed me that he had re- 

 measured the whale and found it to be 43J 

 feet long. The largest Berardius previously 

 known was the type of B. arnuxii of New 

 Zealand, which was 32 feet long. 



Two large beaked whales were found on the 

 coast of St. George Island, Pribilof Group, 

 Alaska, in June, 1903, by Mr. James Judge, 

 the resident treasury agent. One of these, a 

 female, was reported by Mr. Judge as being 

 40 feet 2 inches long, and hence only a little 

 smaller than the Ferndale whale. The other 

 specimen, a male, was 25 feet 5 inches long. 

 It is not certain that these Pribilof whales 

 are of the genus Berardius, though the in- 



