STRANDED AT LONGNIDDRY. 243 



various points of resemblance to the Longniddry specimen. From the greater 

 width of the lower jaw than of the upper, the latter was received within the cir- 

 cumference of the former. The upper jaw was contracted in front so as to 

 terminate in a sharp end. The baleen was black, the longest plates having a 

 vertical diameter of 3 feet, and they were fringed with black hairs. The 

 bristles near the front of the palate were also black, and the intermediate 

 substance was similar in character. The flipper was 10 feet in length, and 2^ 

 feet in its broadest part. The dorsal fin was 2 feet high, and in it was a 

 rounded hole made by a leaden ball. Through this hole in its fin the whale had 

 been recognised by the herring fishermen for nearly twenty years, and was called 

 by them the Hollie Pyke. The back was black and the belly whitish. The 

 blubber was 4^ inches thick on the sides, and one foot on the head and neck. 



Although it is customary for cetologists to regard this broad-jawed whale, 

 described by Sibbald, as the Balcenoptera musculus* yet the characters which I 

 have just related are much more those of the species to which the Longniddry 

 whale will have to be referred. 



b. The best known of the large fin whales is the common Eazor-back, the 

 Balcenoptera musculus, or Physalus antiquorum of Gray, upwards of thirty 

 specimens of which have come under the notice of, and been more or less perfectly 

 described by, naturalists. Between the common Razor-back and the Long- 

 niddry whale there are many characteristic features of difference. In the 

 former the beak is much more pointed than in the latter, and its width rapidly 

 contracts from base to apex, instead of the borders forming a gentle convex curve; 

 the flipper also is absolutely and relatively shorter in proportion to the length 

 of the animal. In the B. musculus, captured near Gravesend, described by Dr 

 MuRiE,t whilst the animal was 60 feet, the length of the pectoral limb along 

 the anterior curve was only 6 feet 3 inches ; in the specimen 67 feet long, stranded 

 at Pevensey, described by Professor Flower,J the flipper was 6 feet 9 inches ; 

 and in the specimen 61 feet long, beached last year at Langston harbour,§ the 

 flipper had the length of 5 feet 4 inches. The external or labial baleen plates 

 are in the common Finner neither so long nor so broad ; their colour is slate- 

 coloured, mottled, or striped with yellow, or white, or brown, or pale horn 

 colour, the setae are white, or yellowish-white ; the palatal mucous membrane 

 is pale, whilst in the Longniddry whale all these structures had a rich deep 

 black colour. In the Razor-back, whilst the back is black, the belly is white or 

 yellowish-white, instead of being mottled with silver-grey, or milk-white, tints. 

 The blubber also is very much thinner in the common Razor-back, — not more 



* Eschkicht, "Die Nordischen Wallthiere." Van Beneden and Gebvais," Osteographie des Cetaces," 

 p. 188. Dr Gray in his Catalogue says, probably it may belong to this species, 

 t Proc. Zool. Soc, Feb. 14, 1865. 

 \ Idem., Nov. 28, 1865. § Idem., Dec. 9, 1869. 



