WHALEBONE WHALES. 
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B. japonica of the North Pacific, B. australis of the South 
Atlantic, and B. antipodarum of the South Pacific), their 
distinctive differences are comparatively slight. The first- 
named was the Whale formerly hunted regularly by whalers 
from the Basque sea-ports of France and Spain, and the main 
source of supply of whalebone and oil until the discovery of the 
Greenland V/hale in the seventeenth century. It became 
extremely rare, but, owing to the diversion of the whalers’ 
attention to the larger and more profitable Arctic species, 
it again became rather more numerous. The skeleton of a 
male specimen obtained from the coast of Iceland forms the 
basis for a half-model of this species. A mass of united neck- 
vertebrae, dredged from the bottom of the sea near Bridport, 
in 1853, probably also belongs to this species. None of the 
Right- Whales exceeds 50 feet in length. 
A cast of the head of the Pigmy Whale, Neohalcena australis^ 
of New Zealand, Australia, and South America, is placed on the 
north wall of the building, and a skeleton near by. Besides 
peculiarities in the form of its bones, this species, which does 
not exceed 25 feet in length, is distinguished by its very long, 
slender, elastic whalebone, which is nearly white in colour, 
with a dark external border. 
The Grey Whale of the North Pacific, Rhackianectes glaucus, 
of which a small model is exhibited, combines the small head, 
elongated form, and narrow flippers of the Rorquals with a 
smooth throat and absence of a back-fin, as in the Right- Whales. 
The whalebone is short and yellow in colour, the two front ribs 
are at least frequently fused together, and the sternum is 
unusually long and narrow. 
Another group is represented by the Humpback AFliale 
[Megaptera booj)s), a species likevv^ise at present represented 
only by a small model in the exhibited series. In this Whale 
the head is of moderate size, and the whalebone-plates are 
short and broad, the neck-vertebrae being free. The most 
conspicuous distinguishing charactei’ is the immense length 
of the flipper, about one-fourth of that of the entire animal. 
It is on account of the low rounded form of the back-hn that 
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