ON THE GREENLAND RIGHT-WHALE. 51 



whalemen with a more scientific education, especially Captain W. Scoresby, had an extremely 

 favorable opportunity for making observations as to its manner of living at the season at which the 

 fishing took place, and also as to its external characters ; but circumstances did not permit of more 

 minute examinations of the internal organs being undertaken, nor of any large parts of the 

 animal being preserved and brought home. If we except the whalebone prepared for trade, all 

 the European museums taken together have gained nothing out of the many thousand individuals 

 killed but about four or five small fætuses, three or four crania, more or less incomplete, and 

 various- separate bones, especially lower jaw-bones and loose tympanic bones.' Of the foetuses, 

 one (a male) has been made use of by Jan Arnold Bennet ;^ another (a female) by Peter Camper,^ 

 to give an outline of the relative position of the principal internal parts, and two by G. Sandifort,^ 

 for the examination of the larynx. Of the skulls, one of a new-born animal, has been described 

 and figured by Camper ;* one of an older individual, in the Berlin Museum, has been briefly 

 described, and delineated, partly by Pander and D 'Alton senior,^ partly by Brandt and 

 Ratzeburg f finally, a skull, in a rather damaged condition, preserved in the British Museum, 

 and belonging to a full-grown individual, and several other single bones, have been described 

 and figured by Cuvier.'' A young cranium in the Hamburg Museum has not, as far as we know, 

 been described.® From materials so incomplete only separate fragments of the anatomy and the 

 osteology of the animal could be given. 



The want of a more accurate account of the characters of the Greenland whale was, perhaps, 

 as far as its skeleton is concerned, less to be regretted, as long as only two species of right-whales 

 were supposed to exist, and the skeleton of the one of these was so well known through the examina- 

 tion of Cuvier. Every bone of a right-whale that did not show the characters of the corresponding 

 bone of the Cape whale would then be set down as belonging to the Greenland whale. Now the case 

 is quite altered, as the researches communicated in the preceding part of our essay have shown. 

 As we have already said (page 44), we may, indeed, presume that all species belonging to 

 either of the groups possess those marks of distinction that characterise the type of the group ; 

 but then it will be of the greatest importance to have a complete knowledge of the characters of 

 both. Thus, a more accurate description of the anatomy of the Greenland whale in general, and 

 more particularly of its osteology, so far from having lost its interest now, when Cuvier's 

 examinations of the Cape whale are in everybody's hands, may, on the contrary, be said, from a 

 scientific point of view, to be more requisite at present than at any previous time. To this we 

 must add the following remarks. In Cuvier's examination- of the skeleton of the Cape whale 



^ ' NatuurkundigeVerhandelingen van de Koninklijke Maatschappy der WetenscLappea te Haarlem,' 

 5 D., 1 Stuk. Amsterdam, 1809. 



^ ' Observations anatomiques sur la structure interieure et le squelette de plusieurs especes de 

 cétacés.' Paris, 1830 (opus posthumum). 



^ ' Nieu-V7e Verhandelingen der eerste Klasse van liet Koninklijk-Nederlandsclie Instituut van 

 Wetenschapen te Amsterdam,' Derden Deels, eerste Stuk. Amsterdam, 1831. 



* Log. eit. 



'" ' Skelette der Cetaceen/ 1827. 



^ ' Medicinische Zoologie,' i Bd., 1829. 



'' ' Recherches sur les ossemens fossiles,' tome v. 



^ [A very large, but not quite perfect skull, formed part of the Hunterian Collection now in the 

 Museum of the Roval College of Surgeons of England. — W.H.F.] 



