of Edinburgh, Session 1881 - 82 . 
523 
advantage of seeing the ribs in place before the flesh was removed. 
He states that on the right side an elongated, compressed movable 
hone, curved like a rib, was applied to and articulated with the 
anterior surface of the 1st true rib, and on the left side a similar 
rudimentary rib was present, which was fused with the body of the 
first true rib, so as to give it a bicipital appearance. Both Pro- 
fessors Flower and Van Beneden regard this supplementary part of 
the 1st rib as a cervical rib, so that the double vertebral end of 
this rib articulates with both the 7th cervical and 1st dorsal 
vertebrae. In my skeleton no supplementary cervical rib was pre- 
sent. The two ribs which were fused together on the right side, at 
the sternal end, were the 1st and 2nd thoracic ribs, and differed 
therefore from the condition described in the other skeletons. The 
constancy with which the bicipital form of the 1st rib had been 
seen, in the skeletons of this animal previously described, had given 
rise to the impression that it might almost be regarded as a specific 
character, and the late Dr. J. E. Gray even went so far as to give 
it generic importance, and named Rudolphi’s whale Rudolphius 
latiwps : 1 In a criticism which I made some years ago on the value 
of this character for purposes of classification, 2 I argued that the 
presence of a cervical rib, Whether blended or not with the 1st 
thoracic rib, Was only an individual variation, and, as cervical ribs 
occasionally occur in men as well as in whales, that one should as 
little think of classifying men who possess cervical ribs as distinct 
from those who do not possess them, as found a genus of whales 
on the presence of these bones. The absence of a cervical rib in 
the skeleton now described, which is an undoubted specimen of 
B. borealis or laticeps , shows that the bicipital form of the 1st rib 
is not constant in this species ; but as the majority of the skeletons 
which have been examined have two heads to this rib, its bicipital 
character would seem in this animal to be the rule, and not, as in 
man* the exception. 
Skull . — The skull resembled, both in its general configuration 
and in detail, the figures of the skulls of this animal published by 
Rudolphi and Van Beneden. The sides of the beak were straight ; 
1 Catalogue of Seals and Whales, and Supplement. 
2 The so-called two-headed ribs in Whales and in Man, Jour, of Anat. and 
Phys. vol. v. 
