ON THE GREENLAND RIGHT-WHALE. 35 



view,^ we shall not hesitate to express our opinion that the fact of the " Sarde's " being, in 

 opposition to the Greenland whale, infested by Cirripeds, proves it to constitute an independent 

 species. This peculiarity of the " Sarde " has since been confirmed by Anderson, who in 

 his 'Nachrichten von Island' (p. 219, ^ 40) mentions this whale by its Dutch name of 

 " Nordkaper." 



Perhaps Anderson obtained his information from Hamburg whalers ; but by the list of whales 

 vrritten by the Icelandic clergyman we perceive that the Icelanders themselves also, at all events, 

 in the seventeenth century, knew veiy well this peculiarity in their Sletbag, although it is not men- 

 tioned in the ' Mirror.' In the description of another whale, also much infested by cirripeds, called 

 " Skjeljunger," perhaps the northern Humpback {Megaptera lonc/imana or hoops), we read 

 the following passage : — •" Asperis testis non secus ac rosis aut stellis exterius ornatus est et 

 depictuSj velut reliqua Slefbalcorum, cjui pinna in dorso carent, genera, quæ vulgo Ceti aquatici 

 nuncupantur, sed minus proprie, excepto Nordhval, qui solo rore victitat ;" and if we venture to 

 refer the words " excepto Nordhval " to " velut reliqua," &c., we have here a proof that the 

 Icelanders had not only observed the existence of these semi-parasitic animals on the " Sletbag," 

 but also their non-existence on the North whale. ^ 



Neither Anderson nor Edge adds anything to enable us to determine to what species 

 these barnacles belong. About this^ however, we have information from a different source. In the 

 years 1778 and 1779 tAvo vessels were sent from Copenhagen to catch cachalots and whales in 

 the Southern Atlantic. They had orders to seek these animals as far as 50° south latitude, and 

 afterwards, on their return home, if it were in a favorable season, to try the " Nordkaper and 

 Whale-fishery," near Iceland and Norway f and one of the vessels, called the " Christianshavn," 

 did really succeed, on one of the voyages (we suppose on that of 1779), in catching a " Nordkaper " 

 between Newfoundland and Iceland, the head of which was infested with such a multitude of 

 Cirripeds that it would have been easy, according to the statement of the captain, to gather a 

 whole sackful of these "white patches," as he called them. On the return of the vessel to 

 Copenhagen, Chemnitz, the distinguished conchologist, obtained a few specimens which the captain 

 had brought with him, and recognised in them the Balanus pohjtlialamius complanatm, described 

 by Walch, the type of the genus Coronula, Lam.* As this animal exists only on right-whales, 

 namely, on the collective species Balæna antarctica, we cannot be surprised that the Cirriped of 

 the "Sarde" or the " Nordkaper", is also a Coronula; nay, we may even find in the fact that such 



' Eschricht, ' Om Undersogelsen af de nordiske Hvaldyr ;' Forhandlingar ved de Skandinaviske 

 Naturforskarnes tredge Mote i Stockholm, 1842, p. 203. Ejusd. Zoologisch-anatomische Unter- 

 suchungen iiber die nordischen Wallthiere, p. 95. Brandt and Eatzeburg had^ however, already 

 pointed out the existence of halaniform animals on the right-whale of the Pacific, and their non- 

 existence on the Greenland whale, as a weighty reason for supposing these two right-whales to be 

 different species^ vide ' Medizinische Zoologie,' erster Band (Berlin, 1829), p. 126, note 3. 



^ While the Greenland whale is never infested by Cirripeds, it is a very well-known fact that 

 it is by a species of Cijamus ; and although this has been denied by Professor Kroyer, in a short 

 notice " Om Cijamus ceti'' (' Naturhist Tidsskr,' 4th vol. p. 474), we are the more surprised at his 

 doing so, as he says himself, that zoologists owe their first information of Cyamus ceti to Martens, who, 

 nevertheless, expressly states that he found his " Wallfischlaus " on this whale. 



^ Pontoppidan, C. Hval- og Robbefangst udi Strat Davis, p. 79 — 81. 



* Schrifter der Berliner Gesellsch. naturf. Freunde, 5th vol. p. 463. 



