GILPIN PORPOISES AND DOLPHINS OF NOVA SCOTIA. 25 



This very imperfect account must be taken as the result of a very- 

 rough dissection done upon the sea beach. The jaws of this fish 

 corresponded exactly with those of several skulls in my possession, 

 from Bay of Fundy, Sable Island, and Halifax Harbour. To the 

 latter one, lent me by my friend, Dr. Somers, Dalhousie College, 

 was attached a portion of the skeleton. In all of them we found 

 the palate flat, composed of maxillars, intermaxillars, and por- 

 tion of vomer showing between them, but no central ridge, or 

 deep sulci running parallel with teeth, as in D. delphis. The 

 spinous process of atlas is large and rakes backward, covering the 

 four next vertebra?. The spinous process of second and third are 

 anchylosed to it. To the body of the fifth is a small process point- 

 ing forward on either side. The spinous process of the sixth is 

 larger. To the seventh, both to its body and to its transverse 

 process is articulated a short broad rib. This mark of articulation 

 on the bodies is lost after the tenth vertebra. From the atlas to 

 the tail there is an elastic cartilagenous disk between each vertebra. 

 The vertebra? are articulated to the sides of each other, until the 

 seventeenth vertebra, where the point of articulation has risen above 

 the neural arch, and forms the sub-spinal process, common to the 

 whole order. The vertebras increase on their spinous and transverse 

 process, rather than bodies, to the middle of the body, the spinous 

 becoming more erect and longer, the transverse longer and flatter. 

 After the middle they decrease in the same order, retaining the sub- 

 spinal process almost into the tail. Sixty-two vertebrae remained 

 upon the skeleton which had lost a portion of the tail. Twenty V. 

 bones, each attached to the cartilagenous disk remained. These V. 

 bones form an attachment for the muscles moving the flukes of the 

 tail downward and backward. Though not attached to this skeleton, 

 I found in others a well developed scapula, with coracoid and acro- 

 mion process, the humerus, radius and ulna massed into one, and 

 metacarpals and phalanges, typed out by spots of bony deposits 

 upon cartilage. The true ribs or those attached to sternum were all 

 jointed, one fhird rib from sternum, and all the ribs were articulated 

 to the transverse process. These divergences, no doubt common to 

 the smaller genera of the order become important when we consider 



