124 



Neobalcena marginata. 

 Balcena marginata, Gray, Cat. Seals and Whales Brit. Mus. , p. 90 ; Hector, Proc. and 

 Trans. New Zealand Institute, 1869, t. 2 6. f. 1-4; Ann. and Mag. Nat. Hist., 

 1870, Vol. v., p. 221. 



Hah. New Zealand. 



This is interesting, as showing that the trvie Balcena or Right Whale of 

 the North Sea and that of the South Sea are each a peculiar genus. 



The width and general form of the beak of the skull is somewhat like the 

 beak of some of the Finner Whales ; but it does not at all justify Mr. Knox's 

 idea that Balcena marginata, is a Finner. But this difference of skull raakes 

 us more anxious to have the description of the entire animal and its skeleton, 

 as the animal may prove to be the type of a new family of Whales, between 

 the true Whales and Finners. 



This pigmy whale, which is not more than 15 or 16 feet long, is a repre- 

 sentative in the Southern Ocean of tlie gigantic Right Whale of the Greenland 

 seas. It has the most beautiful, the most flexible, most elastic, and the 

 toughest whalebone or baleen yet discovered ; and if it were of larger size, it 

 would fetch a much higher price than the whalebone of the Greenland whale, 

 the latter being three or four times the value of the brittle coarse whalebone 

 of the Euhalcena or Right Whales of the Southern and Pacific Oceans. The 

 trade of the Continental nations being chiefly confined to their colonies, or 

 their nierchants obtaining the whalebone that is used in their manufactures 

 second-Jiand, there are not in the market the varieties of whalebone and finner- 

 bone which v/e have in this countiy, where the whalebone and finner-bone 

 from different localities bear each a different value. This perhaps explains why 

 the Continental zoologists (as Eschricht) who have paid attention to the 

 structure of whales have not paid sufficient attention to the characters afforded 

 by the shape, structure, and colour of this substance to which I called their 

 attention more than twenty years ago, and showed its value as a chai'acter for 

 distinguishing the geneva and species. It has been a fertile subject of reproach 

 to me that I established some species on the characters afforded by this 

 substance ; but I need only quote, as a proof of the little attention M. Gervais 

 has paid to this part of my work, that, in his book on the anatomy of whales, 

 now in jorogress, after saying that I have established the Sf)ecies Balcena 

 imarginata on three blades of whalebone, he says I have called it Euhalcena 

 marginata — thus confounding it with the whales with brittle and coarse 

 whalebone, whereas the chief reason that induced me to consider the blades to 

 belong to a distinct species was their very fine and tough structure. The accuracy 

 of the determination is now proved by the very different form of its skull from 

 that of any other known whale. In the same manner, the Physalus antcorcticus, 

 also established on finner-fins or baleen imported from New Zealand, has been 

 proved to be a very distinct species of that genus, named Sulphur-bottoms by 

 the whalers. 



