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REINHARDT ON 
of the preceding fourth cervical vertebra, so the posterior epiphysis of the fifth vertebra would 
not only in time have become united with the middle piece, if the animal had grown older, but 
an ankylosis of the contiguous epiphyses of the fifth and sixth vertebral bodies would also have 
taken place during the process of ossification. But it may be doubted, whether the ankylosis 
of the body of the seventh cervical vertebra with the other six, is to be considered as a conse¬ 
quence of the increasing age of the animal, or whether an individual difference, independent of 
age, does not prevail in this particular; at all events, there is not any other reason to consider 
the individual thrown ashore at Middelfart to be older than the one from Asnaes; it must on 
the contrary, be supposed to be younger; for, in the Middelfart specimen, the epiphyses of the 
vertebral bodies are much farther from being united with the middle pieces in the remaining 
part of the spine, and especially in the dorsal region, than in the Asnaes dolphin, where the 
growth of the vertebrae is all but completed. In the five foremost cervical vertebrae, the 
arches are ankylosed partly by means of their processus obliqui, partly by the points of the 
spines, though not exactly in the same manner in all individuals ; but the arches of the two 
posterior cervical vertebrae are not united with those of the preceding ones in any of the three 
individuals which I have been able to examine, and the ankylosis of the cervical vertebrae seems 
to be fully as much advanced in the bodies themselves, as in the arches, contrary to what is 
otherwise usually the case. There are also some peculiar characters in the transverse processes; 
in the atlas we find as usual a thick transverse process; but the axis, which in the killers and in 
the ca’ing-whales (at least in G. melas ) is also furnished with a powerfully developed transverse 
process, not much inferior in size to that of the first cervical vertebra, presents in our dolphin 
only a slight trace of such a process in a projecting ridge; this, however, as well as the well- 
developed process itself of the allied forms of dolphins, must be supposed to correspond to both 
the superior and inferior transverse processes of the succeeding cervical vertebrae. Such double 
transverse processes are also found in our species, though only in quite a rudimentary condition 
in the third, fourth, fifth, and sixth cervical vertebrae; the superior ones appear like thin, 
vertically placed, osseous laminae, subject to individual differences, that on the third cervical 
vertebra being the largest; the inferior ones are more knob- or knot - like, but about 
these, too, it holds true that they are hardly found quite similar in size and form in any 
two individuals, and one or another of them may even sometimes be entirely wanting. As to 
these last-mentioned processes, our dolphin may be said to have a middle place between the 
killers, in which they have also the form of irregular osseous knobs, but are, however, 
considerably larger than those of our dolphin, and the ca’ing-whale, in which they may almost be 
said to have totally disappeared. But in the structure of the seventh cervical vertebra a striking 
resemblance appears again between the ca’ing-whale and our species; for this vertebra, which 
has no inferior transverse process, is (like that of the ca’ing-whale) provided with a superior 
transverse process turned obliquely forwards, several times longer and thicker than the pre¬ 
ceding ones, whereas, in the killers, the same process is as rudimentary as those immediately 
preceding it. Thus, generally speaking, and contrary to what appears to be the case in many 
oilier parts of the skeleton, the cervical vertebrae resemble those of the ca’ing whale much more 
than those of the killers, and the most essential and conspicuous difference between our dolphin 
and the ca’ing-whale in this portion of the vertebral column is, properly speaking, limited to the 
one already alluded to, which appears in the very different development of the transverse 
processes of the second cervical vertebra. It must be left undecided how far our dolphin and 
