890 PRINCIPAL SIR WILLIAM TURNER ON 
smaller animal which had previously been the object of pursuit. In 1671 F. Martens 
gave* the name “ Nordcaper” to Baleen Whales captured near the North Cape; they 
differed from those which frequented the Spitzbergen seas in being smaller, with 
less blubber, shorter whalebone, more active and more dangerous to kill. The name 
Nordeaper continued to be employed as equivalent to the Baleine de Sarde of the French 
naturalists, and BoNNATERRE and LackpEpE, adopting nordcapert as a_ specific 
name, distinguished it from Balena mysticetus, La Baleine franche, or the Greenland 
Right Whale. 
Owing to diminution in numbers, the pursuit of this whale terminated at the end of 
the eighteenth century, and many naturalists believed that its continued capture during 
the centuries had led to its extinction. G. Cuvirr{ threw doubts, however, on the 
existence of the Nordcaper as a distinct species, and believed that, driven northward 
for refuge to the ice of the Arctic Sea, it was the same as the Greenland Whale; 
F. Cuvisr§ agreed: also with his brother in this belief. In a memoir published in 
1820,|| Perrr CamprEr recognised them as distinct species with different habitats, the 
mysticetus frequenting the whole extent of the icy Arctic, and the Nordcaper not 
living in such high latitudes, but in the seas of Iceland and Norway from the North 
Cape up to the Arctic zone. ? 
In 1861 Escuricut and Reinnarpt {i published a splendid memoir on the Greenland 
Right Whale, B. mysticetus, which contained an analytical description of its geographical 
distribution and of its osteology, and which fully established by facts and arguments its 
specific difference from the Nordeaper. Additional interest was given to this question by 
the report that two whales, mother and young, had been seen, in January 1854, off the 
harbour of San Sebastian in the Gulf of Gascony, that the young one had been captured 
and its skeleton preserved in the Museum in Pampeluna. On hearing of this capture, 
Escuricut visited Pampeluna, and in a letter to van BengpEn,** written in September 
1858, he stated that the whale was the same as the Sletbag of the Icelanders, the 
Balena biscayensis, as he now named the species. He purchased the bones for the 
Copenhagen Museum, and submitted a memoir to the French Academy +f} in which he 
stated that it was not a mysticetus, but was allied to the Balena of the Cape, which 
like the Nordcaper frequented temperate seas. Escuricur did not live to publish 
a description of this skeleton, but the authorities of the Museum granted permission 
to Professor Gasco of Naples to examine, make drawings, and write {{ an account of 
the skeleton, in which he confirmed the opinion of Hscuricut that it was Balena 
* Journal Pun Voyage au Spitzberqguen, Amsterdam, 1732. 
+ Lac&érekpn, Histoire nat. des Cétacées, Paris, an xii. de la République (1804). B. nordeaper, La machoire inférieure 
tres-arroidie ; trés-hante et trés-large ; le corps alongé ; la queue alongée. 
{ Recherches sur les Ossemens fossiles, v., Paris, 1825. § Hist. nat. des Cétacés, Paris, 1836. 
|| Observations matomiques sur la structure intérieure de plusiewrs especes de Cdtacés, with Atlas of 53 plates, Paris, 1820. 
“| Kong. Danske \7idensk., v., 1861. Translated in Ray Soc. Publications, London, 1866. 
** “ Hist. nat. de la Malena biscayensis,” Mém. cowron. Acad. Roy. Belgique, 1886. 
++ Comptes rendus, p. 294, 1860 ; Ann. des Sc. nat., 5th series, t. 1., 1864. 
ti Ann. del Museo Civico do Storici nat. di Genova, vol. xiv., 1879. 
