204 
REINHARDT ON 
vary between fifty-eight 1 and sixty, and with this number agree the greater part and the best 
authenticated of the earlier enumerations of the vertebrae of this species ; in some of our Northern 
Orcas, finally, we find fifty-two, in others fifty-four or fifty-five vertebrae. In this respect, also, 
our dolphin agrees with its kindred species; nay, its vertebrae are even a little less numerous 
than those of the Orcas themselves; for in the individual found at Middelfart, we count fifty-one 
vertebrae, the Refsnaes specimen had altogether fifty. So small a number of vertebrae 
as this is otherwise only found, within the group of the dolphins, in the beluga, and 
in the platanista, 2 which deviates in so many respects from the common type. There is 
some reason to suppose that of the numbers just mentioned, the latter (fifty) will most 
likely be the normal one, whereas the former seems only to be owing to a supernumerary 
vertebra, which in the Middelfart dolphin has accidentally increased the number of the dorsal 
vertebrae beyond the usual number. Eor in the skeleton of the individual found at Refsnaes, the 
caudal vertebrae are not, indeed, all present; but if we compare this skeleton with the one from 
Middelfart, having all its caudal vertebrae, we may easily be satisfied that no more than the last 
three of them are wanting in the former skeleton, and that the caudal vertebrae have originally 
been present in both individuals in the same number, viz., twenty-three : 3 in front of the caudal 
vertebrae, on the other hand, we find altogether twenty-eight vertebrae in the Middelfart 
dolphin, but only twenty-seven in the one from Refsnaes. A more minute examination will show 
that the number of the lumbar vertebrae is the same in both individuals, but that the Refsnaes 
dolphin has ten pairs of ribs, and accordingly as many dorsal vertebra, whereas in the Middelfart 
dolphin an eleventh dorsal vertebra is to be found behind the tenth, and to this additional 
vertebra an eleventh rib belongs, lying loose in the flesh on the right side, to which we find no cor¬ 
responding rib in the left side, a defect which, according to Professor Eschricht’s express assurance, 
is original. The question will therefore be, whether we are rather to suppose that one dorsal 
vertebra is wanting in the Refsnaes dolphin, or that a supernumerary one exists in the 
Middelfart specimen; but as, generally speaking, it is certainly more frequently the case that 
supernumerary vertebrae are to be found in this part of the spine than that any should be 
wanting, and as the circumstance of the eleventh dorsal vertebra in the case treated of being only 
provided with one rib, seems further to speak in favour of the first supposition, and as, finally, I 
have been informed that no more than ten pairs of ribs are to be found in the skeleton of the 
1 In the skeleton, where this number of vertebrae is counted, the last caudal vertebra is evidently 
ankylosed with the penultimate into one bone, which has been reckoned here as two vertebrae; if it is 
only counted as one, the whole number will, of course, be only fifty-seven. 
8 The Hyperoodontes or Zipkioidea have, indeed, still fewer vertebrae; but they do not, accord¬ 
ing to my opinion, belong to the dolphins at all, but, in analogy, with the cachalots ( Physeteres ) 
constitute a group by themselves, equally distinct from the latter, and from the dolphins properly so 
called, all within the great section or sub-order of the toothed-whales; and when we leave these 
unnoticed, our statement, as expressed above, is correct. 
s I consider the hindmost of the two vertebrae to which the first chevron bone (haemapophysis) is 
affixed, to be the first caudal vertebra, as is also done in the essay by Eschricht and myself on the 
Greenland whale, published by this Society. In his earlier essays upon the Cetaceans, and especially 
in the one on the Ganges dolphin, Professor Eschricht has included the foremost of the two said 
vertebrae among the caudal vertebrae, whereas, according to the mode of computation followed here, it 
must be called the hindmost lumbar vertebra. 
