60 ESCHFJCHT AND REINHARDT 



at p. 377, Im. 2, that is three feet nine inches; the total length of the skeleton is not 

 mentioned. While at Paris one of us (Eschricht) measured this skeleton, and found it to be 

 4m. 05, the head Im. 05, accordingly ||, or only little more than one foiu'th. 



According to the above-mentioned statement of M. Gratiolet, the whale caught in Acaroa 

 Bay measured, just after it had been killed, 15m. 90 (fifty feet and two thirds), the head, 

 4m. 22 (scarcely thirteen feet and a half), very little more, therefore, than a fourth (0'2654) 

 of its total length. The head of a foetus thirty-one inches long, taken out of a whale caught 

 near Kamschatka, and belonging to the same group, was only nine inches long, therefore Ir 

 instead of one third. Finally, that the Nordkaper had a comparatively still shorter head, 

 is clearly proved by what has been stated of this species in the preceding part of our essay. 



EXTERNAL CONFORMATION. 



Om- observations upon the external characters of the Greenland whale are almost totally limited 

 to those we have been able to make on the newborn individual presented to the museum by Major 

 Fasting. Besides this, we have only had for this part of our I'esearches the following materials : 

 1. The head of a full grown foetus. 2. The foetus, eight and a half feet long; and finally, 

 3. Some few disconnected portions that followed the skeleton forty four and a half feet long. 



At the first glance at the young Greenland Avhale, the length of which was, as we have 

 mentioned, thirteen feet (Plate I, fig. 1), we were struck by the plumpness and robustness of 

 the shape of its body, and its considerable thickness, very much out of proportion to its length, 

 (peculiarities by which the right-whales in general, but more particularly the Greenland whale, are 

 distinguished from all the rorquals,) although, as yet, only a very inconsiderable layer of blubber 

 had been formed under the skin.^ The body has its greatest circumference at a point almost 

 midway between the fins and the vent ; the vertical diameter is in this place one fifth or one 

 fourth of the total length of the body (Plate I, fig. 1), so that the circumferences of the body 

 may here be reckoned to be three fourths of its total length. 



From the rounded point of the snout the upper contour of the head rises gently towards 

 the blow-holes, situated on the top of a small elevation. This elevation and the occiput form 

 the highest points of the entire body. Behind the blow-holes the outline is at first a little 

 lowered, but then again it gradually rises to a slightly arched elevation indicating the situation 

 of the cerebral cavity, evidently a remnant of the foetal form. The shape of the head when seen 

 from above (Plate I, fig. 2), will be found to differ much from that of the rorquals. It is 

 broadest between the eyes ; immediately before these it is suddenly contracted into three fifths 

 of this breadth, and it continues to taper until it ends in the roundish outline of the muzzle, 

 so that the upper jaw, properly so called, resembles most a beak with an arched surface above 

 and abruptly sloping sides, especially towards the point. The lower edge of the upper jaw 

 (see fig. 1), was already in the foetus, and still more in the newborn cub, curved in the direction 



^ In a young whale, about nineteen feet long, Scoresby found already a layer of blubber five inches 

 thick. See W. Scoresby, ' Journal of a Voyage to the Northern Whale-fishery,' Edinb., 1823, p. 149. 



