vi PREFACE. 



In correcting the press I have carefully compared all the lueasurcments, names, and quota- 

 tions, with the original memoirs. As the former are very numerous, it has been thought advisable 

 to leave them as they stand in the original instead of reducing them into English feet and 

 inches, which would have involved innumerable calculations, with corresponding risk of error. 

 Both Danish and Swedish feet and inches are so nearly the same as our own that for practical 

 purposes they suffice, with the slight allowance that can easily be made mentally in each case, it 

 being borne in mind that the Danish foot is slightly longer than the English, viz., 1-0298 of our 

 foot, or 12-357 English inches. The Swedish foot, on the other hand, is about as much shorter, 

 being 0-9742 of our foot, or 11-690 English inches. 



The following approximative table may be convenient for ready reference : 



Danish 

 Feet. 



English 

 Feet. Inches. 



Swedish 

 Feet. 



English 

 Feet. Inches. 



5 



5 12 



5 



4 101 



10 



10 3i 



10 



9 9 



20 



20 7 



20 



19 6 



oO 



30 101 



30 



29 2J 



40 



41 21 



40 



38 111 



50 



51 5| 



50 



48 8,1 



60 



61 91 



60 



58 51 



70 



72 0| 



70 



68 21 



80 



82 41 



80 



77 11 



90 



92 S 



90 



87 8 



100 



102 111 



100 



97 5 



A few words on the special characters of the different memoirs may not be out of place. 



I. On the Greenland Rigkt-wliale {Balcena mysticetus). ByD. E. Eschricht and J. Reinhardt. 

 — This work was originally published in the ' Transactions of the Royal Danish Society of Sciences ' 

 for 1861, nnder the title "Oni Nordhvalen." Its origin is sufficiently explained in the author's 

 preface. It is certainly a very remarkable circumstance that of an animal so important so little 

 was really known before the publication of these researches. That its osteology had never been 

 completely described is sufficiently accounted for by the fact that of the thousands annually 

 slaughtered no skeleton had ever been sent to any European museum, until Eschricht succeeded 

 in obtaining those which form the subject of this memoir from the Danish colony at Holsteins- 

 borg, in Greenland. The history of its migrations and geographical distribution has been chiefly 

 collected by the authors of the present essay from sources almost inaccessible to any one but 

 themselves. Unfortunately, both the lithographic stones and the wood-blocks used to illustrate 

 the memoir in the ' Danish Transactions ' had been destroyed ; they have, however, been repro- 

 duced for this edition with great accuracy, the former by Mr. E. M. Williams, the latter by 

 Mr. W. Searson. 



In selecting a vernacular name for the animal treated of I have been guided by the following 

 considerations. Although the Balæna mysticetus is certainly the most exclusively confined to the 

 Arctic regions of all the known Cetaceans, yet the term " North whale," preferred for it by the 



