ON THE GREENLAND RIGHT-WHALE. 109 



On the dorsal side of the osseous mass formed by the cervical vertebrae the spinous processes 

 of the anterior six have already been described as a strong ridge, wrhich is most prominent where 

 it is formed by the axis. The spinous process of the seventh cervical vertebra is always free and 

 rather prominent. 



As far as the five middle arches of the cervical vertebrae can be separated from one another, 

 we may already observe in them the imbricated overlapping position, by which the preceding one 

 on either side projects over the one following next, in which position we have at the same time 

 the first trace of posterior articular processes. 



The osseous mass composed of the cervical vertebrae has in our forty-seven and a half feet 

 long skeleton a length of about thirteen inches, of which the atlas and the axis together seem to 

 occupy about six and a half inches, the four succeeding vertebrae scarcely four and a half inches, 

 the last two and a quarter inches. In the forty-four and a half feet long skeleton the length of 

 the cervical vertebrae is altogether only ten inches. 



We have had several additional specimens of this foremost part of the vertebral column of 

 the Greenland whale for comparison, and thus we have been convinced, that though the descrip- 

 tion given above, which has been made according to the condition of these vertebrae as they 

 appeared in the forty-seven and a half feet long skeleton, may in all essential points be found 

 correct, even when we are speaking also of all the others, yet some differences may take place 

 both as to the manner in which the vertebrae are ankylosed, and also as to the degree to which 

 the roots of the transverse processes are developed, and that not only in the different individuals, 

 but even in the right and left side of the same individual. 



The most essential deviations from the condition of these parts, as represented in the woodcuts 

 above, may perhaps be those which very frequently appear in the anterior dorsal vertebra. Its 

 transverse processes are always very much compressed, and at the same time point so much in a 

 forward direction, that they nearly reach the transverse processes of the axis, but frequently, 

 perhaps we may say most commonly, they have their outward extremities expanded into the form 

 of a shovel. This is already the case in our forty-four and a half feet long skeleton, but to a 

 still higher degree in a group of the eight foremost vertebræ of a full-grown Greenland whale, 

 which has been for a long time in the Royal 

 Museum of Natural History, and in which the 

 bodies of the first dorsal and the cervical 

 vertebrae are also completely ankylosed. We 

 shall therefore add a figure of this group 

 twelve times diminished, and seen from the 

 dorsal surface. On the left side the transverse 

 processes have been broken off in the dorsal, 

 as well as in the two posterior cervical ver- 

 tebræ, where they have been indicated by a 

 dotted outline. 



Each of these groups of vertebrae differs so much in appearance from the cervical vertebræ 

 of the fin-whales and hump-backs, which are only seldom and partially ankylosed, even in full-grown 

 individuals, that it could not possibly be mistaken for one belonging to either of the latter species. 

 Any specimen, however much damaged, of such an osseous mass will always be sufficient to show 

 that it belonged to the cervical vertebræ of a right-whale. We have been thus minute in our 



