114 



ESCHRICHT AND REINHARDT 



the extremity to allow the hour-glass form to be very distinctly recognised. Of all the dorsal 

 vertebræ, the fifth has the shortest transverse processes (seven and three quarter inches). 



In the sixth and seventh dorsal vertebrae the transverse processes are perceptibly longer 

 (eight and a half to nine inches), and in them the hour-glass form just mentioned appears most 

 distinctly, as they are bounded by concave margins both before and behind and outwardly, 

 while the anterior articular processes, in the shape of a pair of small wings, are placed quite 

 inwardly on the transverse processes close to their root. 



The transverse processes of the eighth and ninth dorsal vertebræ have much more than 

 those of the preceding ones, the form of broad, flat, and convex cotyloid bodies, and have also 

 still some likeness to hour-glasses, although the articular processes, that should form the 

 anterior corners of these hour-glasses in an inward direction, have already been removed 

 upwards on to the arches. The most certain distinguishing mark of the transverse processes 

 of these vertebræ is, however, the great concavity of the innermost part of their superior surface 

 produced by the great inflection of the articular processes above mentioned. 



The tenth and eleventh dorsal vertebræ 

 (from the forty-four and a half feet long skeleton) 

 '•^1 "^ are represented in the adjoining woodcut, twelve 



times diminished. 



The transverse processes arise here without 

 any connection with the vertebral arches from 

 the uppermost corners of the vertebral bodies, 

 and the articular processes are not only removed 

 to the very top of the arches, but they have 

 also become pressed upwards, in such a manner, 

 from the transverse processes, as to be no longer 

 parallel vi^ith them. Thus the transverse pro- 

 cesses have completely lost that hour-glass form, as we have called it, and the cotyloid form has 

 also partially disappeared, as they are more extended in length (nine to ten inches long), and 

 only slightly convex, although they have stiU the cup-like cavity for the rib on the inferior 

 siu-face of their extremities. 



Finally, the transverse processes appear in the last two dorsal vertebræ in the form of long 

 (thirteen to fourteen and a half inches) horizontal wings, standing out in an exactly transverse 

 direction, and of which the articular cavities for the ribs are not on the inferior surface, but 

 most commonly on the external broad margin itself close to its hindmost corner, especially in the 

 thirteenth dorsal vertebra. 



Prom the consideration of the dorsal vertebræ, and especially of their transverse processes, 

 we shall now turn to the examination of the ribs and the thoracic cavity in general. 



As to the ribs of the Greenland whale, we shall scarcely be more successful in pointing out a 

 common distinguishing mark, that may be applied to aU of them, than we have been when 

 speaking of the bodies of its vertebræ. Generally speaking, they are thicker and heavier than those 

 of the fin-whales, but considerably thinner and more slender than those of the hump-backs, most 

 of them also more strongly curved than in either of these species. The longest of them, the fifth, 

 sixth, and seventh pairs, were in our forty-four and a half feet long skeleton, when measured along 

 the curvature, almost ten feet long, but when measured by a straight line between their two 



