518 
Proceedings of the Royal Society 
lias apparently not yet been described. The Brussels skeleton was 
obtained by Eschricht from the North Cape, and has been described 
by Van Beneden. * The skeleton in the Museum at Bayonne is 
a young male specimen, which M. P. Fischer states was stranded near 
Biarritz in July 1874. f The animal was 7*83 metres long (about 
26 feet). B . borealis is therefore a denizen of the North Atlantic 
Ocean. J 
It is not my intention on this occasion to enter in detail into the 
description of the skeleton of this whale stranded near Bo’ness, but it 
will be necessary to refer to such points in its anatomy as wdli give 
certainty to the identification of the species. The bones of this 
animal were less massive, smoother on their surface, and less porous 
than the bones of either B. musculus or B. sibbaldii. The vertebral 
< 
plates were not anchylosed to their respective bodies, and the 
epiphyses of the radius, ulna, and humerus were not united to the 
shafts of their respective bones. 
The entire length of the skull and spine was 35 feet 2J inches, 
viz., the skull, 8 feet 1 J inches ; the spine, without the interverte- 
bral discs, 26 feet 7 inches. If to this be added 2 feet for the 
probable thickness of the intervertebral discs, and 8 or 10 inches 
for the projection of the lower jaw beyond the upper and the 
thickness of the skin, the length of the animal would have been 
about 38 feet, which closely approximates with what was reported 
* Osteographie des Cetaces , p. 302. 
f Comptes Rendas, 27tli Dec. 1876, p. 1298, voL Ixxxiii. ; said Journal dc 
Zoologie, vol. v. p. 462, 1876. 
+ la Nature , 12th Oct. 1876, is a reference to the Schriftender naturforschen- 
den Gesellschaft in Dantzig , which contains photographs of the skeleton of a 
whale, said to he Pterobaloena laticeps (Gray), stranded in Dantzig Bay in 1874, 
but as I have not been able to obtain a copy of the Dantzig publication, can make 
no further reference to it. I observe that in the Archiv fur Naturgeschichte, 
1875, 41st year, third part, p. 338, is an elaborate description, by Professor 
Zaddach of Konigsberg, of a female fin whale, stranded in August 1874, 
between Neufahrwasser, the harbour of Dantzig, and the village of Heubude. 
He names it Balcenoptera musculus. Its vertebral formula is C 7 D 14 I J i5bd 2 4 
= 60, and the baleen is described as yellow like horn, with bluish-green or 
blackish spots at the outer border. Its length was 10*98 metres (about 36 feet 
English). Professor Zaddach states that he does not give a detailed descrip- 
tion of the skeleton, as the Dantzig Society of Natural History had decided to 
publish a description of it, with drawings and photographs, in their Schriften, 
from the pen of Professor Menge. Can this be the specimen referred to in 
Nature ? The colour of the baleen and the vertebral formula (probably the 
last two caudals had not been ossified and preserved) show its affinity to 
B. musculus rather than to B. laticeps. 
