238 Sheppard : Notes on the Skeleton of Stbbald's Rorqual. 



At the end of this edition of Gray's Catalogue are several 

 pages of ' additions and corrections,' amongst which a reference 

 to the Hull skeleton occurs. It appears that the name is to be 

 changed from Physalus sibbaldii to Cuvierius sibbaldii, the genus 

 Cuvierius being intermediate between the genus Physalus and 

 the genus Sibbaldius ; it being characterised by the broad 

 rostrum of the latter and the vertebras and ribs of the former, 

 and a peculiar sternum. 



The next paper of importance that I have been able to find 

 dealing with the Hull skeleton is by Professor (now Sir) William 

 Turner, F.R.S., etc., who was President of the British Associa- 

 tion meeting at Bradford last year. It is 'An account of the 

 Great Firmer Whale {Balcenoptera sibbaldii), stranded at Long- 

 niddry,' on the Firth of Forth, which is published in Vol. 26 of 

 the Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (1870). The 

 author refers to the changes made in the name by Messrs. Gray 

 and Flower, and adds that 1 those zoologists who do not break 

 up the great genus Balcenoptera into several smaller sub-genera 

 [amongst whom presumably Sir Wm. Turner is to be included] 

 prefer to call the animal Balcenoptera sibbaldii.'' This paper is 

 most interesting and valuable, inasmuch as it contains a detailed 

 description of the external appearance as well as of the soft 

 parts of the same species of Whale that is preserved in the 

 Hull Museum. 4 ' 



Professor Turner refers to an important memoir published in 

 1867 by Professor Reinhardt, in which 'it was clearly estab- 

 lished that a well-defined species of Finner exists in the northern 

 seas, which differs from the common Razor-back, in possessing 

 a greater number of vertebrae, a broader beak to the cranium, a 

 greyish and not a whitish belly, and a uniform black baleen, 

 instead of one mottled with various tints. In the distribution 

 of the tints of the skin, in the uniform black colour of the 

 baleen, and in the length of the animal, the Steypireythr [of the 

 Icelanders] obviously closely corresponds with the Longniddry 

 Whale. But what is even more important for the determination 

 of the species, the cranium, atlas, and hyoid, as far as one can 

 judge from Reinhardt's figures, are almost identical in form 

 With the corresponding bones in the Longniddry Whale. Hence 

 we arrive at the conclusion that the Longniddry Whale is 

 a specimen of the Balcenoptera sibbaldii, or Physalus sibbaldii of 



*A paper by Sir William Turner, giving - an account of the sternum and 

 pelvic bones of this skeleton, appears in the Journal of Anat. and Physiol., 



Vol. 4, 1870. • 



Naturalist, 



