ON THE GREENLAND RIGHT-WHALE. 79 



in the set, afford very distinct marks by which we are enabled to decide of any loose lamina, 

 in what place it was formerly affixed, whether near the front or back, at the right hand side or 

 at the left. 



SKELETON. 



It has been already mentioned, that no naturalist before us has had an entire skeleton of 

 a Greenland whale for examination, and how exceedingly valuable therefore the materials must be 

 considered, which have been at our disposal for this purpose. 



The first skeleton of a whale of this species exhibited, was that of the newborn female, which 

 was presented by Major Easting in 1843 to the Royal Museum of Natural History. The second 

 was that of an almost full-grown male, forty-seven feet and a half long, u'hich Captain Holboll sent 

 in 1846, and which has been exhibited for several years in tlie Zootomical-Physiological Museum of 

 the University. Erom these two skeletons we had already almost finished our description of the 

 structure of the bones of the Greenland whale, when further additions were made to our materials ; 

 first, by the foetus eight feet and a half long, of the female sex, sent down in brine by Captain 

 Holboll, then by the skeleton, twenty-two feet one third long, also of a female individual, sent 

 by Mr. Olrik, and finally, in the autumn of 1860, by the forty-four feet and a half long skeleton 

 of a male, for which we are indebted to Dr. Rink and Mr. Elberg. Each of these additional 

 specimens has afforded us new and essential information, so far complete, as to enable us to say, 

 that the following description has become an osteography not of one or two individuals of the 

 Greenland whale, but of the species itself, generally speaking. 



The forty-seven feet and a half long skeleton of the almost full-grown male is figured at a 

 scale reduced to one forty-eighth of its natural size, in our second plate (fig. I). That which 

 particularly attracts our attention at the first glance at this skeleton is undoubtedly the extra- 

 ordinary size of the head in proportion to the body. Of the forty-seven and a half feet of the entire 

 skeleton the head occupied, as we have already stated above, eighteen and a half feet, or much 

 more than one third, viz., 0-3895. And yet it is scarcely so much on account of the length of 

 the head, but rather on account of its thickness, that the Greenland whale may be justly 

 designated as the most large-headed even among the right-whales. It is, perhaps, the 

 most bulky of all animals, and even if there was some exaggeration, when in the twelfth 

 century, the author of the ' Mirror ' stated that a rope, to encompass its body, must have the 

 entire length of the animal, yet it was not much, as the greatest circumference is, according 

 to the measurements of Scoresby, five sevenths of its whole length. As the most peculiar 

 feature in the shape of the Greenland whale, it deserves to be pointed out, that the head is scarcely 

 much inferior in thickness to any other part of the body, however immense the thickness of the 

 latter may be, so that the head, by occupying at the same time more than one third of the 

 length, must evidently make far more than one third of the entire bulk of the animal. 



As will be seen, this enormous size of the head is essentially caused by the huge dimensions 

 of the cavity of the mouth. To what an extent this cavity may attain, will be evident at the first 

 glance at the figure of the skeleton. Above, the upper jaw forms a high arch, at the sides, the 



