ON THE GREENLAND RIGHT-WHALE. 135 



owing to their being here not only absolutely, but also comparatively speaking/ much 

 larger than in the newborn one (a figure of them, six times diminished, is found in Plate 11, 

 fig. 4), by which it became more striking to us that the two pairs of subsidiary bones were 

 suspended almost vertically from the outer extremity of the horizontally situated chief bone. 

 But we were, especially, confirmed in our belief in the correctness of our interpretation by the 

 fact that the articulation between the larger and smaller subsidiary bone might here, with greater 

 certainty than in the newborn specimen, be seen to take place by means of a synovial capsule 

 inserted between them, and that, further, the larger subsidiary bone was again in a similar way 

 attached to the pelvic bone, as those hgaments by means of which it was attached to the latter 

 here, too, contained a synovial capsule, that could not be mistaken, though we have not found 

 one in any of our other specimens. 



The principal bone has in the newborn specimen almost the form of a hammer, 

 the long handle of which is turned backwards, a form which we have also observed in some 

 odd specimens of these bones from full-grown whales, and which is produced by the 

 anterior part of the bone being comparatively short, and joined with the long posterior 

 shaft at nearly a right angle. In our forty-four and a half feet long individual, the bone 

 (Plate II, fig. 4 a — a!) has not this hammer-like form ; it may here rather be said to consist of 

 two pieces joining in an obtuse angle, to which the larger subsidiary bone is attached by 

 means of ligaments enclosing a synovial capsule. We can hardly, however, see anything 

 in this altered form of the bone but a casual and individual deviation, and the hammer-like 

 form will also appear in this instance if we imagine the obtuse angle to be prolonged into an 

 upright process. 



If we may venture to compare the place to which the subsidiary bone is attached with an 

 acetabulum, it seems natural that we should try to point out those three parts of which the 

 pelvis is usually composed in the pelvic bone of the Greenland whale, and even the common 

 hammer-like form of the bone seems to a certain degree to incite us to make such an 

 attempt, as in the anterior piece {a) we might see the pubic bone, and in the posterior 

 one (a) the ischium, while the upward-turned head of the hammer might be considered 

 as the remains of the iliac bone. We must, however, admit that this interpretation is not 

 supported by the development of the bone as far as we know it. Por the pelvic bone is 

 in the newborn individual, as we have already stated, perfectly cartilaginous, without any traces 

 of ossification ; in the full-grown one it is quite ossified except in its very outmost extremities, 

 but no traces have appeared in any of our more developed pelvic bones, whether those of half- 

 grown or those of the full-grown individuals, of any cartilaginous layer or any line of a former 

 partition at the point of attachment of the greater subsidiary bone, that might lead us to suppose 

 a separate ossification of the different pieces of the pelvic bone. It seems, therefore, that the 

 ossification only begins from one single nucleus ; and if we consider this circumstance to settle 

 the question, we suppose that we must only consider the bone to represent one of the usual three 

 pieces of the pelvis, and then, perhaps, especially the os iscJdi, in conformity with the common 

 interpretation of the pelvic bone of the toothed whales. 



It cannot, however, be doubted but that this bone, both in its form and its position, cor- 

 responds with the pelvic bone also present in the toothed-whales, and that it alone and hy itself 

 represents all that in the Greenland whale is to be intei'preted as belonging to the pelvis. The 

 position of the larger of the subsidiary bones, and its mode of attachment to the pelvic bone, will 



