Sub-Order MYSTACOCETI — THE WHALEBONE 
WHALES 
Family BAL^NIDjE. 
Genus Balaena. 
THE ATLANTIC RIGHT WHALE. 
Balana australis, Desmoulins. 
Plate 42. 
The Atlantic Right Whale or Nordcaper, known to the French as 
Sarde, measures over 50 feet when fully grown. 
According to Professor D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson, C.B., F.R.S. 
{Scottish 3^(aturalist, Sept. 191 8), of sixty-seven specimens captured and 
brought into the Scottish Whaling Stations during the years from 1908 to 
1914, the smallest measured 31 feet and the largest 59 feet, but it is 
not certain whether these measurements were taken along the curve of the 
animals' bodies or in a straight line. The average girth of twenty-two 
specimens was about 32 feet. 
Outwardly this Whale chiefly differs from the Greenland Right Whale 
in having a smaller head, shorter and thicker baleen, while the curved 
margin of the lower lip follows a different line. 
Along the top of the upper jaw, which slopes steeply from where the blow 
holes are placed in the crown, is a rough horny mass known as the ' bonnet.' 
The head is large, measuring about one fourth of the animal's entire 
length, the body short and thick-set with no dorsal fin, and tapering 
rapidly towards the tail. 
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