ON THE GREENLAND RIGHT- WHALE. 



115 



extremities, only six and a quarter feet, the first pair according to the former measurement 

 five feet and three quarters, and according to the latter three feet and two thirds ; the thirteenth 

 pair according to the former measurement four feet and one third, according to the latter 

 four feet. 



Of an ankylosis of the two foremost ribs which SchlegeP has found in the skeleton of a 

 Cape whale preserved in the Leyden Museum, we have discovered no traces in any of the 

 specimens of the Greenland whale which have been at our disposal. 



When we consider the ribs separated from their natural connections and placed in their 

 order of succession close to one another, as they are shown in the woodcut below, twenty-four 

 times diminished, of those of the left side of our forty-four and a half feet long skeleton, we are 

 immediately struck by the great difference between them, both as to size and form, and in the 

 latter respect, both generally speaking and especially as regards their vertebral or proximal ends, 

 to which we must first direct the attention of our readers. 



With respect to the differences of the vertebral ends of these thirteen pairs of ribs, we may 

 naturally divide them into three classes, the first of which comprises the two foremost pairs, the 

 second the eight succeeding ones, the third the three hindmost ones. In those mentioned first, 

 the vertebral extremity is broad and strong, but truncated at the end ; in the eight middle 

 pairs, on the contrary, it runs out into a shaft, especially from the side nearest to the concave 

 edge of the bone ; and in the three posterior pairs, the vertebral end presents a slight (hardly 

 perceptible in the thirteenth) knob-like enlargement of the otherwise slender bone. It will 

 easily be conceived, that the attachment to the corresponding vertebral bones must be different 



Loc. cit.j 1st part, page 37. 



