1. BAL^NA. 37 



toral fin broad, truncated at the end ; fingers 5. Tympanic bones 

 rhombic ; maxillary bones narrow. 



Capt. Maury's Whale-Charts show that Eight Whales are found 

 in almost aU seas, from the poles to within 35 or 30 degrees of lati- 

 tude on each side of the equator. An experienced whaler observes 

 that " Eight Whales are as seldom seen ia that belt as Sperm-Whales 

 are found out of it." Capt. Maury justly observes, the torrid zone 

 is to these animals "forbidden ground, audit is as physically impos- 

 sible for them to cross the equator as it would be to cross a sea of 

 flame. In short, these researches show that there is a belt of from 

 two to three thousand miles in breadth, and reaching from one side 

 of the ocean to the other, in which the Eight Whale is never found." — 

 Maury, Whale-CTiarU, p. 233. 



Prof. Van Beneden, in a paper to the Eoyal Belgian Academy, and 

 reproduced enlarged in the ' Osteographie — Cetaces,' gives a geogra- 

 phical distribution of Whales.- He acknowledges only six species, 

 having the following distribution : — 



1. B. mystieetus. The Arctic Ocean on both sides of Greenland, 

 and on the coast of Siberia to the Sea of Okhotsk. 



2. B. biseayensis. The North Atlantic, from latitude 65° to 45°, 

 and a belt across the Atlantic to the coast of the United States, from 

 lat. 45° to 50°. 



3. B. japonica. A band across the North Pacific from lat. 60° to 

 45° on the west coast of America and 45° to 30° on the coast of 

 Japan. 



4. B. australis. A belt across the South Atlantic, from lat. 25° 

 to 30° on the south-west coast of Africa and lat. 35° to 50° on the 

 coast of South America. 



5. B. antvpodarwm. In a similar belt across the South Pacific 

 from the west coast of South America, in lat. 45°, to New Zealand. 



6. A species which he does not name, said to inhabit a belt from 

 Natal to the south-east part of Australia, about lat. 30°. 



See Dr. Gray's observations on this' theory, Ann. & Mag. Nat. 

 Hist. 1868, vol" i. p. 242, and 1870, vol. vi. p. 193, in which he ob- 

 serves " I think I have proved that M. van Beneden's theory is 

 entirely unsupported by facts." 



I. Baleen thin, polished, with a thick enamel on each side and a fine elongate 

 slender fringe (cf. p. 42). 



1. BAL.aiNA. 



Balsena, Gray, I. e. pr 79 ; Synops. Whales 8f Dolph. p. 1 ; Lillfeborg, 

 N. Acta Upsal vi. 1867. 



First rib slender, narrow, and undivided at the vertebral end. 

 Tympanic bones square ; aperture nearly as long as the bone. There 

 is at the end of the radius and at the end of the cubitus a large car- 

 tilaginous compartment which corresponds with the radial and cu- 

 bital bone, and has not even a bony nucleus ; between these two 

 cartilages is an iutermediate cartUage ; below these are two or three 



