38 
Proceedings of the Royal Society 
the whale was at or about her full time. Several square feet of the 
foetal membranes were examined. The outer surface of the chorion 
was thickly studded with villi, which over large areas had no 
special mode of arrangement; but in some localities they formed 
an irregular network, in others they were seated on long ridge dike 
elevations of the chorion, and in other cases conical folds of that 
membrane, 5 or 6 inches long, were closely covered with villi. The 
placenta was diffused, but with a tendency to aggregation of the 
villi where the chorion was raised into ridgedike and conical folds. 
The paper contained an account of the vessels, the pharynx, 
laryngeal pouch, the omentum, the intervertebral discs, the cylin- 
driform fibrous mass which supports the lower jaw, and a description 
of the atlas, axis, hyoid bone, sternum and pelvis. The sternum 
was shown to be not a rudimentary bone, but of considerable size, 
consisting of three large lobes with a posterior pointed process. 
The dissection of the foetus proved that the opinion entertained by 
anatomists, that in the baleen whales the sternum is a single 
bone developed from one ossific centre, is not correct for all the 
species. For in this Balcenoptera the foetal sternum consisted of two 
distinct masses of cartilage, one of which corresponded to the 
posterior pointed process, the other to the larger 3-lobed anterior- 
portion. The pelvic bones were also described. In the foetus they 
were still cartilaginous, but had the same general form as in the 
adult, which proved that in the process of ossification no important 
change took place in their external configuration, and that the 
pelvis of the male differs in no essential feature from that of the 
female. From the appearance presented by the skeleton generally, 
the large whale was obviously in the stage of growth which Mr 
Flower has termed “ adolescent.” 
The paper was illustrated by photographs, drawings, and speci¬ 
mens. 
3. Note on Aggregation in the Dublin Lying-in Hospital. 
By Dr Matthews Duncan. 
In this paper it is pointed out that deliveries are a better means 
of arriving at an estimate of the healthiness of an hospital than 
amputations; that the deliveries in the Dublin Hospital are re¬ 
markably valuable because of their great number (nearly 200,000), 
