SCANDINAVIAN CETACEA. 249 



Second Family. BALÆNIDÆ, /. B. Gray. Whalebone-Whales. 



Without developed teeth; in their place, on each side of the upper jaw, transverse horny plates 

 {baleen or whalebone), f ringed on the inner and lower edge, and acting as a screening apparatus 

 in taking their food. Blowers, with separate longitudinal openings on the upper side of the head, 

 far behind the point of the snout. Only the first pair of ribs united to the sternum. 



What I have previously stated with regard to the deficiency in our knowledge of the Cetacea 

 generally, may be applied in a higher degree to this family than to the preceding, partly because 

 the whalebone-whales are more seldom caught, and partly from their being generally of more 

 colossal dimensions and, consequently, offering greater difficulties for scientific examination and 

 preservation. Although the profitable whale fisheries have for centuries— indeed before the 12th 

 century, when the Basques began to occupy themselves with it — attracted attention to them ; and, 

 although zoologists from the time of Aristotle have given much consideration to them, it 

 may be said that this science has only recently taken such a direction, that the knowledge of 

 their structm-e and natural history generally have come to rest on a sohd basis. The merit of 

 this is due to Rudolphi, G. Cuvier, and principally toD. F. Eschricht.^ The former has, in the 

 Transactions of the Berlin Academy, accurately described and figured the bones of two species, and 

 called attention to the defining characters thus obtained. The second has, in his ' Recherches sur 

 les Ossemens Eossiles,' based the distinctions of forms and species upon a minute comparative 

 examination of the skeletons of whales, adopting the same excellent method as for other living 

 and extinct mammalia and reptiles. The third has in his ' Undersogelser over Hvaldyrene,' and 

 in his '-Zoologisch-Anatomisch-Physiologische Untersuchungen liber die Nordischen Wallthiere,' 

 carefully described the external form, as well as the internal structure and development of two 

 whalebone-whales [Balmoptera rostrata and Megaptera boops), and thereby given us the proper 

 course to pursue, in determining the importance of the characters, and considering the relation 

 between the forms. He has also specially pointed out some characters of the greatest importance 

 in distinguishing the species of the entangled and difiicult group of Balænopteræ. 



We may form an idea of the former state of cetology, by considering that the 

 Balæna mysticetus had been hunted for upwards of 200 years in the northern Polar sea, and had 

 been caught by the 100,000, without any European museum having a complete skeleton of this 

 whale, until Eschricht, a few years ago, procured one for the Physiological- Anatomical Museum in 

 Copenhagen. We find, therefore, in Lacépéde, as late as 1804, erroneous statements of the 

 number of vertebræ and ribs in this species. The Nordcaper or Biscay whale, a remarkable 

 species mentioned by earlier authors, and for centuries the principal object of the whale fisheries 



[1 The name of John Hunter, whose classical work, "Observations on the Structure and 



(Economy of Whales," 'Phil. Trans.,' 1787, preceded those of the three authors above mentioned, 



should not be omitted. — W. H. F.] 



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