SOWERBY'S WHALE ON THE AMERICAN COAST 



GLOVER M. ALLEN 



A CENTURY has now elapsed since Sowerby's whale (Mesoplodon 

 hidens) was first made known to science by James Sowerby ('04) 

 in his British Miscellany. During this period barely more than two 

 dozen additional specimens have been recorded and these have 

 more often been to a greater or less extent imperfect. Flower 

 (72) in his account of the genus, listed but ten specimens of this, 

 species known by him to be at that time preserved in the museums 

 of the world. Seven of these ten specimens were represented by 

 skulls only, while of the three others more or less of the skele- 

 ton was saved. Turner ('89) gave the number of known records 

 for the occurrence of this whale as nineteen, and a few more 

 specimens have since been made known, so that the general char- 

 acters of the species are now fairly well ascertained. 



At the time of Turner's writing (1889) but two examples of 

 ^lesoplodon had been recorded from the western side of the 

 North Atlantic. The first of these was stranded on Nantucket 

 Island, Massachusetts, in 1867 (Agassiz, '68), and its length is- 

 recorded as 16 feet, 3 inches (J. A. Allen, '69, p. 205). The sec- 

 ond American specimen was captured on March 28, 1889, at 

 Atlantic City, New Jersey, and was secured by Dr. F. W. True 

 for the United States National Museum (Turner, '89, p. 13). 

 Nothing further was known of the species in American waters 

 until 1898, when a young female was found dead on the coast at 

 Annisquam, Massachusetts, in August. Its skeleton was obtained 

 by the late Professor Alpheus Hyatt for the museum of the Boston 

 Society of Natural Histoiy. Save for a brief mention (Hyatt, '99) 

 this specimen has not been reported upon. 



I am indebted to Mr. Thomas Barbour, of New York City, for 

 the privilege of recording a fourth American specimen and the 

 twenty-sixth hitherto known. Mr. Barbour has very kindly writ- 

 ten out the following notes respecting this interesting capture. 



"On the 22d of July, 1905, a large specimen of Mesoplodon 



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