104 ESCHRICHT AND REINHARDT 



the full-grown foetus we have been completely convinced about the correctness of this statement. 

 The result of our examination is the following. 



In the description of the external appearance of the newborn Greenland whale it has already 

 been mentioned that the inner margin of either of the nostrils is stiff and immovable in its 

 curved form, with its concavity tm-ned outwards and forwards. The margin is supported by a 

 strong cartilaginous plate standing vertically on the cranium, near which it is divided into several 

 much-convoluted cartilaginous parts, which we cut through in order to convince ourselves that 

 they do not contain any cavity. They are placed in immediate connection with the cartilaginous 

 lining of the nasal cavity, which, again, is itself part of the primordial cranium. The outer 

 convex margin of the nostrils is, on the contrary, quite soft and very tumid. When its 

 cutaneous covering is removed, it looks, at first sight, like a large round bag. But when it is 

 cut through it appears to be composed entirely of muscular fibres, the arrangement of which, 

 relative to one another, it would scarcely be easy to describe. If we further examine the canals 

 from the nostrils into the nasal opening in the cranium, either by putting a finger into them or 

 by opening them by means of a knife, we shall see that these canals, in their whole extent, 

 are almost entirely closed in the same manner as the openings of the nostrils, for a soft 

 and rounded ridge on their outer wall fits closely into the inner wall, so that a transverse section 

 of these canals presents everywhere the same semicircular figure as the external opening, though 

 not always placed in the same direction, the soft ridge just mentioned winding somewhat in 

 its course. We shall hardly need to state that this soft ridge also contains muscular fibres, 

 and the mechanism of the whole structure of these parts may easily be understood. Not only 

 the nostrils, but both the nasal cavities, are throughout their course, from the nostrils to the 

 nasal openmg iu the cranium, closely shut up when the animal is not breathing, because the 

 muscles in the exterior labia of the nostrils, and in the soft ridge of the nasal canals, are then in 

 a relaxed state ; but the soft labia of the nostrils, as well as both the ridges in the nasal canals, 

 disappear when the animal is breathing, by the contraction of the enclosed muscles, and the 

 semicircular openings of the nostrils are changed into two circular orifices, and the narrow nasal 

 canals into two cylindrical tubes. 



In enumerating the vertebræ it will be most convenient and safest to choose the foremost 

 chevron bone (hæmapophysis, os en V) for our starting-point. Before this we have found in 

 all our five skeletons (the ankylosed cervical vertebræ being reckoned as seven) thirty-three 

 vertebræ; behind it, in the foetus and the young individual twenty-two, in the two older 

 individuals and the newborn one twenty-one. In the former case the entire number will 

 therefore be fifty-five, in the latter fifty-four, a difference in the number of the vertebræ 

 insignificant compared with what is to be found in some other Cetaceans provided with 

 vertebræ as numerous. Which of the two numbers, fifty-four or fifty-five, should be put down 

 as the most frequent, and therefore the normal one for the species, it would be scarcely safe 

 to decide upon an enumeration in such a small number of individuals ; nevertheless, we are 

 inclined to favour the supposition of fifty-five, the more especially because one vertebra seemed 

 to be wanting in both of our two large skeletons, namely, in the forty-four and a half feet 

 long one, between the eleventh and the twelfth caudal vertebra, and in the forty-seven and a half 



