r 87 1 



II. Contribution toivards a Knowledge of the Osteology/ of the Pigmy Wliale (Neobalajna 

 marginata). By Frank E. Beddaed, M.A., F.B.S., Prosector and Vice-Secretary 

 of the Society. 



Received May 23, read November 20, 1900. 



[Plates VII.-IX.] - 



IHE earliest description of any part of this Whale is, so far as I am aware, to 

 be found in Dr. Gray's account of the Cetacea collected during the voyage of the 

 ' Erebus ' and ' Terror ' '. In that memoir he described and figured the baleen of the 

 creature, which was known from three plates, obtained off' Western Australia, and 

 now in the collection of the British Museum. These measured 20 inches in length, 

 and were noted as remarkable on account of their " pure white " colour. The baleen, 

 Dr. Gray remarked ^, " is much smaller and broader compared with its width at the 

 base than, and is different in colour from, the baleen of any of the other species [of 

 Balcena']." He adds to this that it " is of nearly the same structure as that of the 

 Greenland whale." Dr. Gray's descriptions of new forms of whales, based upon 

 fragmentary portions of their hard parts, were seldom so fortunate as this particular 

 identification of the plates of whalebone with an animal unknown to science. It was 

 by him retained in the genus Balcena in the ' Catalogue of Seals and Whales.' Gray 

 was fully justified, and not long afterwards, by further discoveries of this whale. 



In 1869 Hector 2 described and figured a skull of a young example of the same 

 whale. Upon this skull Dr. Gray founded a new genus for its reception, to which he 

 gave the name oi Neohalcena^. 



Later on Sir James Hector appended some " Notes on the Cetacea in the Colonial 

 Museum, Wellington," to a paper by Dr. Knox " On the BalsBuidge, or Whales with 

 Baleen " •^. In the course of these notes upon the subject of the present article 

 measurements and figures of the skull of Ifeohalcena were given, and the author 

 identified the animal with that originally described by Gray in the following concluding 



' Zoology of the 'Erebus' and 'Terror,' 1846, p. 48, pi. i. fig. 1. See also Cat. Cetacea B. M. 1850, p. 14, 

 and P. Z. S. 1864, p. 200. 



^ Catalogue of Seals and Whales in the British Museum, 1866, p. 90. 



^ Trans. New Zealand Inst. ii. p. 26, pi. ii. B. figs. 1-4. See also Ann. Nat. Hist. v. p. 221, and vi. p. 155, 

 figs. 1 & 2. 



■' Supplement to the Catalogue of Seals and Whales, 1871, p. 39. 



^ Trans. New Zealand Inst. ii. p. 21. 



VOL. XVI. — PART II. No. 1. — August, 1901. o 



