THE RIGHT WHALE OF THE NORTH ATLANTIC. 907 
respective vertebre, so that each chevron belonged to two vertebre with the inter- 
vertebral cartilage. The larger chevrons were massive and ranged in dimensions from 
11 to 9% inches in vertical diameter and from 74 to 64 in transverse diameter across 
the basal articulation. The smallest chevron was 54 by 64 inches (fig. 18). In 
Fic. 18.—Chevron bones, 
two bones the lateral plates were not fused together mesially and there was no 
spine; in the larger each plate was 6 inches by 4 inches; in the smaller, 34 inches 
by 3 inches. 
In this skeleton the number of vertebree corresponded with those recorded in the 
Kuropean skeletons of this whale which Gasco, in the specimen from Taranto, and 
GULDBERG, in two from Iceland, had examined and described. In these the cervicals 
numbered seven, and the dorsals fourteen, except perhaps in that captured at San 
Sebastian in 1854, where the number of dorsals was said by Gasco to be thirteen.* The 
skeletons of B. cisarctica chronicled by Trux from the American coast also had fourteen 
dorsals. With these numbers the skeleton now described is in accordance. ‘Twelve is 
the customary number for the lumbar vertebre, and twenty-three, or in one specimen 
twenty-four, for the caudals. In the skeleton described in this memoir, the vertebra 
which I have regarded as the 12th lumbar had a partial articulation at the posterior 
border of its ventral surface for a chevron bone. Some might be disposed to regard 
it as the 1st caudal, which would reduce the lumbars to eleven bones, and would 
add this vertebra to the caudal series. The formula of the adult spine of the ~ 
North Atlantic Right Whale is C,D,,l,,Cd,,;=56. Gasco has figured the block of 
cervical vertebre of the immature Taranto biscayensis, as well as representatives 
of the other groups of vertebre in which the vertebral plates were not ossified to 
the bodies. 
Weare now in a position to examine the proportion of each region of the spine to its 
entire length, and of the length of the skull to that of the vertebral column. The block 
of cervical vertebrx, 13 inches long, represented the thickness of both the bodies of the 
vertebree and their ossified intermediate discs. On an estimate that the entire spine 
* One dorsal had probably not been preserved. 
