134 ESCHRICHT AND REINHARDT 



nor, indeed, have they found, any great amount of confidence; and, moreover, as other naturalists, 

 as Rudolphi, Dubar, Companyo, and Schlegel, in dififerent whalebone-whales had never found any 

 thing but a single pelvic bone on either side of the vent, just as in the tooth-whales, we were led 

 to consider it as a common rule for the Cetaceans generally that these two pelvic bones were all 

 that was left of the whole osseous system of the posterior extremities. 



It was, therefore, not a little siu-prising to one of the authors, Reinhardt, when, eighteen 

 years ago, in examining the newborn Greenland whale presented to us by Major Fasting, so 

 frequently mentioned in our present memoir, he found on either side, besides the pelvic bone 

 usually present in the whales, two other bones, the larger of which was attached to the pelvic 

 bone, and supported the third suspended from its inferior extremity. Only one of the three 

 bones was ossified, and that even only in its middle part, and it was not the one corresponding 

 with the rudimentary pelvis, properly so called, but the upper one of the two subsidiary bones. 

 In the common pelvic bone not the least trace of any external or internal nucleus of ossification 

 was to be discovered, nor was any such nucleus found in the third, which is attached to the 

 extremity of the larger subsidiary bone. This discovery was shortly afterwards imparted ver- 

 bally to the other of the authors of this memoir, who took occasion to renew his researches as to 

 this point in examining some foetuses of the lesser fin-whale and the Greenland hump- 

 back,^ that happened to be at his disposal. In the former of these he found no traces of 

 any subsidiary bone ; but in two hump-back foetuses (one of each sex) he succeeded in finding, 

 close to either of the common pelvic bones, another bone several times smaller, having the form 

 of a short club with a thick head. In a fætus of the same whale afterwards received, and some- 

 what larger (seventy-eight inches long), he also found, after having prepared the whole pelvis in 

 its natural position, this same additional bone attached to the outer side of either of the 

 common pelvic bones ; but he did not, in this case either, find any trace of a third bone; and 

 finally, the examination of one of the pelvic bones of a full-grown hump-back, which at his request 

 had been forwarded to him, still surrounded by the adjacent soft parts, gave also the same result. 

 He therefore, began to doubt whether that third cartilaginous piece found by Reinhardt in the 

 Greenland whale was really an independent part, and the other bone, also found in the hump-back, 

 appeared by its position in relation to the chief bone to be so anomalous in the general structure of 

 the pelvis that this pair of bones almost seemed to him to be most analogous to the marsupial 

 bones of the marsupial animals," which again would imply that they were, properly speaking, to 

 be compared with ossa sesamoidea, or ligamentous ossifications. 



Reinhardt, however, had not been mistaken when he made the discovery mentioned above. 

 Both the authors have since found again all those three pairs of bones discovered by him both 

 in the half-grown and in the full-grown Greenland whale; and as we received and immediately 

 assisted each other in examining these bones of the forty-four and a half feet long skeleton, it 

 became perfectly evident to us that, as it is only the one pair that corresponds with the rudi- 

 mentary pelvis also found in the toothed-whales, the other two hidden in the flesh must 

 be interpreted as Jdnd legs, of wJiicJi no traces are to be found in the tootlied-wliales. 



That this interpretation of these bones became clear to us in this specimen, was partially 



■^ Transactions of this Society, 4tli series, 12th part, page 306. 



'^ Ibid., 5th series, vol. i, p. 100 (compare also Eschricht, ' Untersuchungen iiber die Nordischen 

 WalltWere,' Ister Band, p. 137). 



