ON THE GREENLAND RIGHT-WHALE. 63 



out in consequence of the comraencing decomposition, but the thick and soft epidermis (the 

 " Mattak " of the Greenlanders) having been removed, all the holes in which they had been situated, 

 resembUng those made by a needle, v?ere discovered. Each of these holes was found on the top 

 of a small knob of the skin, about one line broad, being thus the more easily distinguishable 

 (see Plate I, figs. 4 and 5). Judging by the number of these knobs, we should say that the 

 Greenland whale has more hairs than hitherto have been found in any other Cetacean, though 

 certainly the far greater part of them are collected on the anterior extremity of both jaws, while 

 none are to be found along the upper lip, which is in other cases the place where they 

 occur in the greatest numbers (in the toothed whales indeed they are not found anywhere 

 else). On the muzzle sixty-six holes were counted in the newborn animal; in the foetus about 

 fifty. Without being arranged in any precise order, they were gathered somewhat in the form of a 

 crescent, the convexity of which was turned forwards and downwards (Plate I, fig. 5). On the 

 lower jaw their position was quite different. On its foremost part on the symphysis, a space 

 two inches broad was found without these hair knobs ; but outside this space we found several, 

 pretty regularly arranged in four or five rows (Plate I, fig. 4). Gradually, however, these 

 disappeared in an outward and backward direction, except one row, which (Plate I, fig. 1) was 

 continued along the base of the under lip, formed by six or seven holes at a continually 

 increasing distance from each other, the last at a distance of about two feet from the middle of 

 the lower jaw. On the right side of the lower jaw we counted forty-eight holes in the newborn 

 specimen presented to the Museum by Major Fasting; on the left side there were fifty-five holes, 

 by which it will be seen that the number of the hairs is not so constant in this as in many other 

 Cetaceans. Around the blow holes, where both the Vaagehval {Balænoptera rostrata) and the 

 Greenland humpback {Megaptera longimana) have several hairs growing, we did not find in this 

 newborn North whale the least trace of any hair knobs, or opening in which hairs might have been 

 growing. In the foetus, on the other hand, eight or nine hair knobs were distinctly visible 

 encircling the hindermost corner of either blow hole. We might, therefore, feel inclined to 

 suppose that these hairs fall out during the uterine life of the fætus ; but on that piece of the 

 skin that remained with the blow holes of the full-grown whale, we still found near the place 

 in which the skin had been cut through, a single hair standing on a level with the hinder 

 extremities of the blow holes. It was only ten lines long, about one third of a line thick, of a 

 yellow colour, very stiff and solid, without the least trace of any inflection. 



Behind the slight elevation which indicates the position of the occiput, the outline of 

 the back was a very little sunk in the newborn specimen, so that the foremost part of the back 

 was somewhat hollow ; but then, again, it arose in a very slightly curved line up to about the 

 same height as that of the occipital prominence. Its most elevated point was almost directly above 

 the umbilicus. 



The outline of the belly was sinuous. Just before the fins it was bent a little inwards, 

 which caused the body to appear in this place slightly constricted ; then it ran towards the vent 

 in a uniformly curved line of which the greatest curvature was placed somewhat nearer to the 

 inflection before the fins, than to the vent. 



The body was almost circular in the foremost part ; towards the vent it became somewhat 

 compressed at the sides, especially, in a downward direction, so that a section of the body in this 

 place would be oval. In giving this description of the shape of the body we must not, however, 

 forget to call the attention of our readers to the fact that the abdomen had been opened. 



