]20 
CETACEAN GALLERY. 
executed coloured model, on the scale of one inch to the foot, pre- 
sented by Captain David Gray, gives a good idea of its external 
appearance. 
Besides the Greenland AVhale there are several other members 
of the genus, distinguished from it by having heads somewhat 
smaller in proportion to the body, and with shorter baleen, and a 
larger number of vertebrae. These inhabit the temperate seas of 
both northern and southern hemispheres; and although divided 
by zoologists into several species, in accordance with their geogra- 
phical distribution — B. hiscaijensis, of the North Atlantic; B. 
japonica, of the North Pacific; B. australis, of the South Atlantic ; 
and B. antipodamm and novm-zelandice, of the South Pacific — 
their distinctive characters, if any, have never been accurately 
made out. The first named was the Whale formerly regularly 
hunted by whalers from the Basque sea-ports of France and 
Spain, and the main source of supply of w'halebone and oil until 
the discovery of the Greenland Whale in the seventeenth century. 
It therefore became extremely rare, but owing to the diversion of 
the whaler^s attention to the larger and more profitable Arctic 
species, it has of late years become again rather more numerous. 
The skeleton of a male specimen obtained from the coast of Iceland 
has lately been added to the collection. A mass of united cervical 
vertebrae, dredged from the bottom of the sea near Lyme Kegis, in 
1853, probably also belongs to this species. The skeleton from 
New Zealand (labelled Balcena australis) , a not quite full-grown 
animal, exhibited in the Gallery, shows how closely related the two 
sj)ecies are. None of the Bight Whales exceed 50 feet in length. 
JSeobalana. Two skeletons (adult and young) of a very remark- 
able Whale of small size (less than 25 feet), from New Zealand and 
Australia, of wdiich very little is as yet known, are placed on the left 
side of the room, near the windows. Besides some great peculiarities 
in the form of its bones, this species is distinguished by its very 
long, slender, elastic baleen, whick is nearly white in colour, with a 
dark external border. 
Rhachiariectes. The Grey Whale of the North Pacific, of which 
a skeleton is exhibited, combines the small head, elongated form, 
and narrow pectoral fin of Balcenoptera with the smooth throat 
and absence of the dorsal fin of Balcena. It is an exceedingly rare 
