BALA NIDA 239 
(fifteen) of ribs and dorsal vertebre. This form inhabits the tem- 
perate seas of both northern and southern hemispheres, and is 
divided into several so-called species, according to their geographical 
distribution :—B. biscayensis of the North Ailantic, B. japonica of 
the North Pacific, B. australis of the South Atlantic, and B. anti- 
poderum and B. novee-zealandic of the South Pacific. The differential 
characters by which they have been separated, external as well as 
anatomical, are, however, slight and subject to individual variation ; 
and the number of specimens available for comparison in museums 
is not yet sufficient to afford the necessary data to determine 
whether these characters can be regarded as specific or not. 
The most interesting of these is the Atlantic Right Whale, 
which was formerly abundant in the North Atlantic, but is 
now so scarce as to appear verging on extinction. This was 
the Whale the pursuit of which gave occupation to a numerous 
population on the shores of the Basque provinces of France and 
Spain in the Middle Ages. From the tenth to the sixteenth centuries 
Bayonne, Biarritz, St. Jean de Luz, and San Sebastian, as well as 
numerous other towns on the north coast of Spain, were the centres 
of an active Whale “fishery,” which supplied Europe with oil and 
whalebone. In later times these Whales were pursued as far as the 
coast of Newfoundland. They were, however, already getting scarce 
when the voyages undertaken towards the close of the sixteenth 
century for the discovery of the north-eastern route to China and 
the East Indies opened out the seas around Spitzbergen ; then for 
the first time the existence of the Greenland Whale became known, 
and henceforth the energies of the European whale-fishers were 
concentrated upon that animal. It is a singular fact that the 
existence of the Atlantic Right Whale was quite overlooked by 
naturalists till lately, all accounts referring to it being attributed to 
the Greenland Whale, supposed once to have had a wider distribu- 
tion than now, and to have been driven by the persecution of man 
to its present circumpolar haunts. To the two Danish cetologists 
Eschricht and Reinhardt is due the credit of having proved its 
existence as a distinct species, from a careful collation of numerous 
historical notices of its structure, distribution, and habits; and their 
restoration of the animal, founded upon these documents, has been 
abundantly confirmed by the capture of various specimens in recent 
times, showing that it still lingers in some of the localities where it 
formerly was so abundant. The only known instances of its 
occurrence on the coasts of Europe in modern times are in the 
harbour of San Sebastian in January 1854, in the Gulf of Taranto, 
in the Mediterranean, in February 1877, and on the Spanish coast 
between Guetaria and Zarauz (Guipuzcoa) in February 1878. The 
skeletons of these three whales are preserved in the museums of 
Copenhagen, Naples, and San Sebastian respectively. On the coast 
