7122 Celacea. 



old elephant. As soon as all the Mugh inhabitants, both of Cox's 

 Bazaar and Muskal Island, heard of the circumstance, they all sallied 

 to the spot, and found that it was a large whale. They then measured 

 it, and found it to be 60 cubits (equal to 90 feet) long and 28 cubits 

 (equal to 42 feet) in circumference. They then cut up the animal, and 

 each one helped himself to a large portion of the blubber, from which 

 a quantity of oil was extracted. Two flakes of its gill [? flakes of 

 baleen] were brought to me," remarks the writer, " which are indeed a 

 great curiosity." The foregoing details were obtained from a Mugh 

 Christian, who is not likely to have remarked the presence of a " back- 

 fin." 



The other recorded example, stated to have been 84 feet in length, 

 was thrown up dead upon Juggu or Amherst Islet, about 2° further 

 south, during the rainy season of 1851. A few of the bones were col- 

 lected in the following year by the present Major T. P. Sparkes, then 

 Assistant Commissioner of Rarari, and were presented by him to the 

 Society's museum. They consist of the two rami of the lower jaw, a 

 right rib (probably the third of the series), the left radius, and five 

 vertebrae. The proportional length of the radius indicates the animal 

 to have been a Balaenoptera or rorqual, while the remarkable slender- 

 ness of the lower jaw sufiices to prove it a distinct species from any 

 hitherto described rorqual. 



The only whale, indeed, that I can find to bear comparison with it is 

 one described in the 'Philosophical Transactions' (vol. i. p. 11) as cited 

 by Dr. Gray, who refers it to his Megaptera americana, founded upon 

 the tracing of a drawing of a species stated to be common off the Ber- 

 mudas (an almost subtropical locality). That whale is thus described : 

 — " Length of adult 88 feet ; the pectoral 26 feet (rather less than one- 

 third of the entire length) ; and the tail 23 feet broad," &c. From 

 the medium length of the radius of the Indian animal the species must 

 be very different ; in fact, a Balaenoptera as distinguished from a 

 typical Megaptera or " hunch-back." 



But the lower jaw is remarkably slender for a Balaenoptera, even 

 more so than in Balasna mysticetus, as viewed laterally, while the 

 coronoid process is well developed, as in Gray's figure of the lower 

 jaw of Balaenoptera rostrata ; the base of the jaw, however, posterior 

 to the process is not deeper, as in that figure, but the reverse, and the 

 jaw is proportionally much longer anterior to the process. The entire 

 length of each ramus is within less than 2 inches of 21 feet, showing 

 the head to have been about a fourth of the total length. Vertical 

 diameter, 3 feet in advance of summit of coronoid, 18 inches (measured 



