ON THE GREENLAND RIGHT- WHALE. HI 



almost horizontal position to meet each other in the mesial line, close to which they are raised, as 

 it were, to form the slight spinous process. The spinal canal is here very large, and especially 

 very broad (five inches high, eight inches broad). The arch of this vertebra has in front and on 

 either side of its superior surface rather a sharp transverse depression, into which the arch of the 

 seventh cervical vertebra fits with its prominent hindmost squamous portion, the posterior 

 articular processes as they are called (see the woodcut, page 109). But the arch of this first 

 dorsal vertebra projects in return, scale-like, fitting into the transverse depression on the arch of 

 the succeeding vertebra. In opposition to its low spinous process the first dorsal vertebra is 

 distinguished in a very conspicuous way by its exceedingly long, flat transverse processes 

 pointing forwards to an extraordinary degree, as already described (see all the last three 

 woodcuts). 



The peculiarities here described of the first dorsal vertebra become less pronounced in those 

 next following, and at last they disappear to make room for very different special characters in 

 the posterior part of the dorsal region. 



The vertebral bodies gradually increase, even to double the length of those in front, whereas 

 they become but very little higher, and scarcely broader at all (eight inches long, eight and a half 

 inches high, and ten inches broad) ; they quite lose, therefore, the disk-like form by which the 

 first dorsal vertebra still so closely resembles the cervical vertebræ. Trom the inferior surface of 

 the bodies the carinated form just mentioned disappears entirely, and in their superior surface 

 instead of the groove a longitudinal elevation is seen, so that the heart-like outhne of the 

 transverse section has become circular. 



The transverse processes in this region of the spine continually descend more and more, so that 

 in the most posterior dorsal vertebræ they spring directly from the vertebral bodies themselves 

 close to> their superior angles. Thus it happens, that the common root for these and the corres- 

 ponding lateral branch of the vertebral arch now belongs exclusively to the arch, and as it always 

 stands rather vertically erect, the vertebral arches themselves appear by this change to have become 

 more erect, and accordingly to have completely lost their horizontal position. The spinal canal, 

 too, gradually becomes less wide, though it always keeps comparatively broader in the Greenland 

 whale than in the rorquals. In the forty-four and a half feet long skeleton it is, measured anteriorly, 

 five inches high, eight inches broad, posteriorly four inches high, and six inches broad. 



The spinous processes at the same time become more and more prominent, and it is only at 

 their origin in the mesial line of the arch that they appear as prolongations of its two lateral 

 branches. In the foremost dorsal vertebra, where they are very short, they are somewhat inchned 

 in a forward direction ; in the following they are raised so as to stand vertically on the spine, then 

 (from the eighth dorsal vertebra) they become more and more inclined in a backward dkection, 

 even so much in the hindmost dorsal vertebræ that they completely overhang the succeeding 

 vertebra, and at the same time they increase so considerably in height, that whereas in our largest 

 skeleton the spinous process of the first dorsal vertebra was only four inches high, that of the 

 hindmost one was fifteen inches. At the same time their form is not less conspicuously altered. 

 They become much compressed with a short superior and longer anterior and posterior margins. 

 Of these three margins the superior becomes continually broader from the fourth to the eighth 

 dorsal vertebra, especially in the hindmost half, but again more narrow in the posterior dorsal 

 vertebræ ; the anterior and posterior margins become sharp, reckoned from the third dorsal 

 vertebra ; from the tenth vertebra they become hollowed, too, in their upper half, by which 



