NORTHERN SPECIES OF ORCA. 185 



Professor Lilljeborg had already become partially acquainted with these differences, but he 

 thought that they might possibly be explained as sexual characters. That this is not the case 

 was obvious to me, when I had an opportunity of finding them again on those three or four other 

 skeletons, of which the crania and other bones had been sent to me as belonging to animals 

 stranded at the same time. One of these crania, 35" long, had come to the Royal Museum, and 

 by examining this Professor Reinhardt had already by himself, and quite independently, arrived 

 at the same conclusion as I had, namely, that we had before us a new species of this genus. 



Professor Lilljeborg has already stated that the cranium is two inches broader, it is 

 besides an inch longer, though the whole skeleton is 2" shorter. The same author has also 

 stated quite correctly, that the scapula is somewhat broader, the ribs both longer and 

 broader, and the foremost ones more strongly curved, to which may still be added that the 

 bones of the arm are perceptibly thicker ; but when he says that these differences might pos- 

 sibly be explained as characters of sex, he can hardly have observed to what an extraordinary extent 

 they attain in the foremost pair of ribs; for the length of these ribs is really 12 J", or one eleventh 

 of the length of the whole skeleton, whereas, in the Thomsen specimen, it was only SJ," 

 or one eighteenth. This surprising length of the first rib of the Orca skeleton, only llf 

 long, from the Faroe Islands, will appear the more extraordinary when compared with 

 the length of that of the 19^' long skeleton of the Benzon specimen, which was also only 

 12|", or but little more than one eighteenth of the total length of animal, and, comparatively 

 speaking, just the same as in the Thomsen specimen (which again may serve as an addi- 

 tional proof that the latter skeleton belongs to the same species). But I have had the great ad- 

 vantage over Professor Lilljeborg, in having been able to examine three other skeletons of the 

 same shoal, more or less incomplete indeed, but still affording sufficient proofs that all these and 

 other differences in the small skeleton, so far from being differences of sex, or age, or individuals, 

 must, on the contrary, be considered as evidences of its belonging to a new species of Orca in 

 the northern seas. 



The loose bones that followed with the skeleton belong, as we have stated, to three skeletons 

 two of which are much larger, the third only a little larger than the complete skeleton. Among 

 these bones we found, as we have said, altogether four pair of pelvic bones, and the smallest of them 

 evidently belonged to the skeleton (see p. ] 77), the smallest but one to the other very young indivi- 

 dual, and these have, therefore, without doubt, been females. One of the two longest skeletons was 

 a male, to judge by its pelvic bones already described, the other a female ; and we confidently con- 

 jecture that this whole little shoal consisted of a pair of killers with one young one all but new 

 born, and another one year older, both females. But it seems to be more uncertain whether the 

 largest individual was the male or the female. I regret particularly that the cranium of the larger 

 skeleton has not come into my possession. 



After having arranged the bones of these three defective skeletons, as far as circumstances 

 made it possible, I now give the following statements as the result of my examination of 

 them. 



1. Every possible doubt of their belonging to one and the same species has been re- 

 moved. The differences pointed out above in the small but complete skeleton have all been 

 found again in the larger ones, as far as this was possible, the bones being incomplete and sepa- 

 rated from one another. Thus, perhaps, the superior length of the anterior pair of ribs ought 

 first to be particularly noticed. It is 2' long in the largest specimen, whereas, in the Benzon 



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