ON THE GREENLAND RIGHT-WHALE. 95 



laginous lining, but also the interior surface of the vomer [v—v] which formerly enclosed the 

 primordial vomer, have been laid bare. For just as the primordial cranium, as it has been 

 called, to which the ethmoid and the turbinated bones also belong, is prolonged above in a 

 cartilaginous lining of the entire nasal cavity [m°—m''—i), it is prolonged downwards in the 

 enormous primordial vomer, -which not only fills the very capacious cavity of the vomer {v—v), 

 but even where this ceases at the foremost third of the superior maxillary is still prolonged 

 to the very tip of the upper jaw.^ Of these two anterior prolongations of the primordial 

 cranium, only the most posterior part will be found in an ossified state in the full-grown Green^ 

 land whale, and a special figure of this region, presenting several difficulties to the interpreter, is 

 given in the fifth figure of the same plate. 



The letters have here the following significations : 



a. The first turbinated bone. 



6. The second „ 



c. Thethird^ 



(I. A cavity in the side wall of the nasal cartilage. 



/. The left lateral surface of the ossified part of the primordial vomer. 



m°. The side wall of the ossified nasal cartilage. 



«r. A prolongation of the same, also ossified, 



w". The internal surface of the superior maxillary. 



æ. A spongy bony mass between the superior maxillary and the vomer. 



V. The foremost surface of the osseous part of the primordial vomer. 



V. The internal surface of the vomer. 



As far as the vomer has been left untouched by the section, by which means its external 

 surface appears on the left side, we may distinguish three parts in it ; anteriorly {v'), the part 

 covered by the palatine portion (m) of the superior maxillary, in the middle {v"), the part covered 

 by the palatine bone, and behind, that part (w'^) in which the external surface of the vomer is 

 free and forms the left lateral surface of the nasal septum. 



As it is scarcely possible, however, to have a clear conception of the form of this bone, 

 deeply concealed in the interior of the cranium, except by seeing it perfectly isolated, it is 

 shown in this state in the accompanying illustration, taken while we were examining it in the 

 unborn individual. 



Just before v" the posterior free edge of the septum of the nasal canals will be seen, as well 



1 Compare the description of the primordial cranium of the " Vaagehval " {Balæmptera minor), 

 in the ' Transactions of the Danish Royal Society/ 4th series, vol. xii, p. 249 et seq., tab. xiii 

 and xiv. [Republished in the "Zoologisch-Anatomisch-Physiologische Untersuchungen uber'die Nor- 

 dischen Wallthiere," by D. F. Eschricht, Leipzig, 1849.] 



Compare figures of these parts in Balænoptera minor, 1. c, tab. xiii. 



