ON THE GREENLAND RIGHT-WHALE. 89 



extremities of the interraaxillaries. Of these prolongations, from the anterior edge of the frontals, 

 it deseiTes also, perhaps, to be pointed out that they are comparatively larger in the newborn 

 animal (Plate III, fig. 1,/), just as in the Cape whale they are at least distinguishable at birth, 

 though not visible in full-grown individuals. On either side the frontals, like the superior 

 maxillaries, are produced into their orbital processes. In the newborn specimen these lateral 

 prolongations of the frontals are comparatively very broad, especially as compared with their still 

 very small length (in the transverse direction of the body). In the full-grown individual, on the 

 contrary, they are extremely narrow, arched in their upper surface, but excavated in the form of 

 a groove on the lower one, so that they really appear like semicircular canals, destined to protect 

 the optic nerves, and only in their most external part, where they are c onsiderably extended in 

 breadth, to form, as ordinarily, the roof of the orbit. It has already been mentioned that, 

 although these long lateral prolongations of the frontals point very much in a backward direction, 

 so that they approach very near to the lateral prolongations of the occipital bone, yet some space 

 is left between them, in which they are, as it were, bound together by a peculiar very strong 

 ligament (x). Thus, these prolongations appear especially on the superior surface of the 

 cranium. On its inferior surface, on the contrary (as well as from the sides), the zygomatic 

 bones (z) are seen inserted between them, by which means the circumference of the orbit is closed 

 below. 



Neither the zygomatic nor the lachrymal bones appear to have been seen in the Greenland 

 whale before; both the one and the other have, at least, been wanting in all crania of this 

 species hitherto described and figured. The zygomatic bones of the Greenland whale differ from 

 those of the Cape whale in being less strongly curved, and having their articular surfaces which 

 meet the superior maxillaries, much more elongated. The lachrymals are exceedingly small, much 

 smaller, indeed, than those of the South whales. While they appear quite distinctly, not only 

 in both the Cape whales figured by Cuvier, but also in the cranium of a South whale 

 foetus in our possession, which is only sixty-three inches long, and brought from the sea near 

 Kamschatka, we have not succeeded in tracing them in any of our very small Greenland whales, and 

 we are tolerably sure that they are not to be found in this species in a state of ossification 

 until after birth; but in all our older skeletons we have found these bones (Plate II, fig. 1, and 

 Plate IV, fig. 2 : /), as usual, inserted on either side, between the superior maxillary and the 

 frontal, just before the zygomatic, in the shape of narrow splinters of bone tapering towards the 

 inner side. 



The parietals {ossa parietalia), situated nearest to the frontals in the cranium itself, are not 

 very prominent in the Greenland whale. Already, in the newborn individual, they are completely 

 covered by the squamous portion of the occipital in the middle of the superior surface of the 

 cranium, though in Cuvier's figures of the very young Cape whale they are seen distinctly 

 standing out, together with the interparietal. In the temporal fossa the parietals of the Greenlanp 

 whale are seen, like those of the Cape whale, to form about the whole anterior half of its lateral 

 surface (Plate II, fig. 1, b), turned directly outwards, whereas the posterior, more transversely 

 placed half (same fig., t) is formed by the temporals. The temporal fossa is further, as in the 

 Cape whale, and contrary to that of the rorquals, much higher than broad, and the fibres of the 

 temporal muscle must point almost directly down towards the coronoid process of the lower 

 jaw, curving round the posterior edge of the lateral part of the frontal, which serves them 

 as a pulley, far less than in the rorquals. The part of the parietal belonging to the temporal 



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