1859.] On tlie Great Rorqual of the Indian Ocean. 485 



The B. mtsticetus is generally believed to be the largest of the true 

 Bal^e:og; and it rarely attains to 70 ft. long, according to a very 

 high authority, the late Rev. Capt. Scoresby : but Mr. Polack, whose 

 work on New Zealand contains much original matter concerning the 

 great Cetals of the Southern Ocean, states that B. antaiictica. " not 

 unfrequently attains the length of 70 ft., and the breadth where 

 the flipper is placed (which is the thickest part) is often 18 ft. The 

 female is invariably the larger." B. austkalis is stated rarely to 

 exceed 50 ft. in length. Again, the head in Baljgna approaches to 

 one-third of the entire length, while in the ' Finners' and ' Hunch- 

 backs' it constitutes about a fourth. Lastly, the configuration of 

 the chief bones of the l flipper' or limb is very different in the 

 Bal^NtE to what is seen in the others, as shewn by Cuvier's figures 

 in the Ossemens Fossiles. These various considerations enable me 

 to pronounce, with confidence, on the genus of the two great indi- 

 viduals which have been stranded, of late years, on the eastern 

 shores of the Bay of Bengal. 



The following notice of the 90 ft. specimen (as alleged), that 

 was cast upon the Chittagong coast in 1842 (in about Lat. 21° N.), 

 is taken from a letter that appeared in the ' Friend of India' news- 

 paper for Sept. 15th of that year. It appears that "early on the 

 morning of the 15th August, the attention of the people of Cox's 

 Bazar, and those of Muskal island, were attracted by something in 

 appearance like a capsized hull of a large vessel, floating on the 

 surface of the sea, coming towards the mouth of the Muskal river, 

 and when it approached near the land they perceived that it was a 

 living creature, by its continually spouting up water into the air, 

 and by the middle of the day it cast itself on the shore of the west 



Mr. P. H. Gosse, that — " Moreau de St. Meri, in his History and Description of the 

 old French Colony of St. Domingo, relates that in his time (1785), in the months 

 of March, April, and May, as many as five and twenty vessels from the North 

 American States could be seen on the coast off Sale Trou near Jacmel, fishing 

 for Cachelot Whales, and, he adds, for Soufflews (Bal;enoptera) ; and that this 

 fishery was with equal spirit pursued within the Gulf to the west of the colony ; 

 — that is, within the bight, in which I saw the Cachelot breach. The whale- 

 fishers resorted to Turk's Island to boil their oil." A Naturalist'' s Sojourn in 

 Jamaica^ p. 353. 



3 K 



