205 
XIV. 
ZOOLOGY: 
ANTARCTIC CETACEA. 
By R. Lypexxker, F.R.S. 
Twat whales are abundant at certain times of the year in certain 
parts of the Southern ocean, and that they resort to the coasts of 
southern Patagonia, New Zealand, etc., during the breeding season, is 
a well-known fact. For instance, Mr. W. 8. Bruce,* in his account 
of the animals met with during the voyage of the ss. Balwna, of 
Dundee, in 1892-93, speaks of the great number of large whales met 
with in the Antarctic. And Mr. H. J. Bull, in a letter to The Times 
newspaper of December 25, 1895, testifies to the number of “blue 
whales” encountered during the cruise of the steam whaler Antarctic. 
“The number of blue whales,” he writes, “in the Antarctic must be 
very considerable. On our cruise we noticed them more or less fre- 
quently from the 64° to the 74° south lat., between the long. of 165° 
to 178° east.” These “blue whales,” it appears, were rorquals, or 
finners. But, to go back to earlier years, Sir James Ross recorded 
meeting with numbers of what he regarded as right whales, or “ black 
whales,” in high Southern latitudes. 
This latter statement has given rise to the idea that the Antarctic 
Ocean, like the Arctic Ocean, is the habitat of a right whale which 
frequents the edge of the ice for a considerable portion of the year, 
and only proceeds northwards for the purpose of breeding. And it 
was, to a great extent, with the object of capturing these supposed 
South Polar right whales that the Antarctic was fitted out and 
despatched. Needless to say the venture ended in disappointment ; 
for, although the southern right whale undoubtedly travels far south 
during its journeys to and from its breeding resorts on the coasts of 
New Zealand and elsewhere, it is most certainly not an endemic 
polar species, analogous in its habits and distribution to the Green- 
laad right whale. It is, in fact, distinctly not an ice-whale; and the 
same apparently holds good with regard to the rorquals and all the 
* ‘Proc, Phys. Soc., Edinburgh,’ vol. xii. pp. 359-354 (1894). 
