CETACEANS. 
44 
the back-fin represented merely by a low ridge; and it also agrees with that 
animal, and thereby differs from the other members of the family, in having all the 
vertebrae of the neck separate. The flippers are short, very broad across the 
middle, and bluntly pointed; and the short and rounded head is separated from 
the body by a slight constriction indicating the neck. The teeth are usually nine 
or ten in number on each side of the jaws; but vary in size, and are often irreg¬ 
ularly and obliquely implanted. The white whale attains a length of 16 or 16^ 
feet. In colour the young are light greyish brown; but the skin of the adult is a 
pure glistening white. Baron Nordenskiold says that the adult animal is 
singularly beautiful, the glistening white hide scarcely even showing a spot, 
scratch, or wrinkle. 
Distribution. The w ^ e whale ranges as far northward as latitude 81° 35', 
while it occasionally straggles as far southward as Cape Cod, in 
Massachusetts, and the Scottish coasts. It occurs in large herds on the coasts of 
Spitzbergen and Novaia Zemlia, and especially frequents the neighbourhood of the 
mouths of rivers, up which it will ascend for considerable distances. Five instances 
of the occurrence of this species on the coasts of Scotland have been recorded; the 
last of these being in the summer of 1879, when a specimen was found near 
Dunrobin, Sutherlandshire, at ebb-tide, with its flukes caught between two short 
