Haast.—On a Skeleton of Megaptera lalandii. "E 
no measurement of the animal in the flesh could be taken. Allowing for 
the intercartilage of the vertebre, the animal had probably a total length 
of 80 feet. The skull measures 7 feet 8 inches in length, with a greatest 
width across the ossa zygomatica of 5 feet. 
The animal was evidently a young one, all the plates of the vertebrze 
and the epiphyses of both extremities of the pectoral limb being still 
unanchylosed. I counted 318 plates of baleen on each side of the jaw. 
It is short, has the usual faleate form, is of a uniform black colour, and 
is edged with thick bristles. Beginning at the gape it increases rapidly in 
size, so that the sixtieth plate is 42 inches broad at the base, and 181 inches 
long, with a length of the bristles at the tip of 2 inches. This size it 
maintains for about 150 plates till to the hundredth plate from the snout, 
when it begins to diminish in size, so that at the sixtieth plate it is only 10 
inches high and 33 inches broad at the base. It still continues to become 
gradually smaller till the twentieth plate is reached, when it rapidly 
decreases in size. The number of vertebre of which the 7 cervical 
are all free is—7 cervical, 18 dorsal, 10-lumbar, 21 caudal: total 51. 
We possess, however, 19 caudal vertebre only, the two last, and, accord- 
ing to my informant, very small vertebrae having been lost during the 
transmission of the skeleton. There are only 18 dorsal vertebre instead 
of 14, as usually occurring in them, but I am certain that one pair of ribs 
is neither wanting nor could I find any articulation on the twenty-first or 
first lumbar vertebra, which in every respect resembled the following or 
second lumbar. Van Beneden and Gervais, on page 127 of their ** Ostéo- 
graphie des Cétacées,” state, when speaking of the northern humpback, 
Megaptera boops, “Il y a des squelettes à treize côtes, mais l'on peut 
supposer, qu'il y a une qui manque." In view of the occurrence of a 
similar deficiency in the humpback of the southern hemisphere where 
according to the same authors the number of the dorsal vertebre is 14, the 
same as in M. boops, we have to admit that the number varies between 
18 and 14. The number of lumbar vertebre is given as 9. However, I 
failed to find in the tenth or following vertebra, which ought to be taken as 
the first caudal, any sign of a hypapophysis for the artieulation of the first 
chevron bone; it resembled in this respect entirely the foregoing ninth 
lumbar. The space for this articulation in the next or eleventh vertebra is 
marked so very slightly, that I once thought it might also be added to the 
lumbars. In that case there would have been 11 lumbars and 20 caudal 
vertebra. Lilljeborg in his exhaustive memoir on the Scandinavian 
Cetacea published by the Ray Society amongst the memoirs on the Cetacea, 
states that Megaptera boops has 11 lumbo-sacral and 21 caudal vertebrsm. 
He has probably experienced the same difficulty as I had to distinguish 
