i6q Sir Everard Home on the canal for containing 
number of joints by which these bones are united to each 
other, that it is enabled to perform the office of any thing 
resembling the fin of a fish. 
In the whale tribe, they are not properly fins, (although 
they cannot deserve any other name) as they contain the same 
series of bones as in the seal ; and yet no reason can be given 
why that is the case. In the Proteosaurus, which partakes 
more of the fish than of the whale tribe, there is probably a 
greater degree of nicety of adjustment of motion wanted 
than in the whale, and consequently a greater subdivision of 
parts, to compensate for the unyielding materials of which 
these parts are composed ; and in this instance there are more 
than two hundred bones, which must greatly exceed the 
number of cartilages met with in the fins of the shark. 
The facts shown in this specimen, it will be admitted, are 
of considerable importance, in making us more intimately ac- 
quainted with the skeleton of this most extraordinary animal. 
The second figure contained in the same Plate, (PI. XV.) is of a 
less interesting nature, because the parts have been repeatedly 
shown upon former occasions ; and although there is suffi- 
cient resemblance of parts to give the idea of this figure 
belonging to the same skull as the other, on which the facts 
that have been detailed have their dependance, if that is 
admitted, much intervening substance must have been lost. 
In this figure, the teeth are better seen than in any other 
that I have examined ; they are distinctly grooved on their 
surface up to their points, and are firmly fixed in the jaw, 
so that they are all preserved in their proper place. 
The section of the nose, represented in PI. XVI. shows that 
the nostrils are continued on to the point of the nose, and 
