240 PROFESSOR TURNER'S ACCOUNT OF THE GREAT FINNNER WHALE 



quantity of oxygenated air may be stored up to be made use of when the animal 

 remains for some time below the surface, by permitting an interchange, by 

 diffusion, to take place between the pure air in it and the carbonised air within 

 the lungs. 



It has been customary to consider, that because the Balcenoidea have no 

 vocal cords, therefore they have no voice, and cannot produce sound.""" But 

 although they do not possess a pair of elastic bands, extending horizontally 

 across the larynx between the arytenoid and thyroid cartilages, such as we see in 

 the mammalia generally, yet in the posterior horns of their arytenoid cartilages, 

 united by the transverse ligament, they possess a pair of structures which can 

 be approximated or divaricated, and by the vibration of which, as the air 

 passes between them, into or out of the lungs, sounds may very probably be 

 elicitecl.t Their vibration would, without doubt, be assisted by their close 

 relation to the air-filled laryngeal pouch. 



The nares consisted of two vertical passages, separated by a cartilaginous 

 septum, which opened superiorly on the dorsum of the head by the external 

 apertures or blow-holes, whilst by their deeper orifices they communicated with 

 the nasal part of the pharynx. "When looked at from below (fig. 39), the 

 mucous membrane was seen to be pitted with the mouths of numerous gland 

 follicles, and to cover the surface of an oval fibro-cartilage which formed a 

 considerable convexity in the outer and anterior wall of the passage, and in 

 contact with the outer surface of which was a muscle. When the external 

 orifice was widely opened, a fold, occasioned by the position of a large postero- 

 external cartilage, fitted into a corresponding depression on the antero-external 

 wall (fig. 40). A muscle, apparently a dilator, lay beneath the skin to the 

 outer side of the aperture, and was attached to the cartilage at its postero- 

 external angle. It is clear that the nostrils can be readily and widely opened, 

 and also forcibly and completely closed, during the respiratory movements, so 

 as to retain the air within the windpipe and lungs when the animal dives below 

 the surface of the water. 



Genito-urinary Organs. — In fig. 9, the form and relation of the penis 

 in the foetus are represented. As all that portion of the organ in front of the 

 crescentic folds was invested by integument, the penis in this animal seemed in 

 its flaccid state, not to be altogether retracted within a sheath, but to be in part 



* Dr Marttn, in a paper published in the Proc. Roy. Soc, London, 1857, ascribed the supposed 

 absence of the voice in the cetacea to the absence of a thyroid gland ; but as I pointed out in a memoir 

 published, in 1860, in the Transactions of this Society, a thyroid gland exists both in Phocama and 

 Delphinus. 



t Whilst this memoir is passing through the press, Dr Murie has published in the " Journal of 

 Anatomy and Physiology," November 1870, an interesting paper on Grampus rissoanus, in which he 

 points out that a laryngeal sac of moderate capacity exists in the toothed whales in the angle of junc- 

 tion between the enlarged epiglottis and the thyroid cartilage. He also describes a pair of folds within 

 the larynx of Risso's grampus, which he regards as representatives of the vocal cords. 



