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Show •r>36 MR. R. BROWN ON THE CETACEANS [Nov. 12, each side of the gum, is a continuous curve, broadest anteriorly, blue, sides pale blue and carnation mixed. The upper lip is very much smaller than the under. The lips are furrowed immediately behind the edge and bevelled, and are all deep black and speckled. No traces exist of either eyebrows or eyelashes. The eye is very small and hollow, measuring from canthus to canthus 3h inches (in adult), and 1| inch deep, with a deep furrow superiorly and inferiorly immediately above and below the eye. The inside of the eyelid is red. The aperture of the auricular canal is difficult to find, and is not larger than the diameter of a goose-quill. The laminae or " splits " of whalebone are longest in the middle, but grow much shorter posteriorly to this " size-split." The number of laminae is about 360 on each side. The whalers have a notion that there is a lamina for each day in the year; but this, like the idea that Jonah's face can be seen on the nose of the Whale, is, I am afraid, a rather hasty generalization. Each lamina ends in a tuft of hair, this tuft being continuous with the hair on the inside of the bone, this "hair " again being composed of identically the same substance as the whalebone itself. The outside of the bone is smooth, pale blue-coloured, with the edge3 overlapping, the free edges pointing posteriorly, but with an interval (varying according to the age of the animal) between the laminae of so very regular a character that each lamina can be seen and even counted from the outside. Where the bone is placed in the gum it is of a greyish-white colour, and on exposure to air becomes black ; all of the portions of the bone most exposed are of a blackish colour. On the outside of the laminae, a few inches from the end, is a transverse wave or ridge, continuous in a slightly elevated ridge across the whole of the laminae ; and in old Whales there are several of these wavy transverse ridges, which are apparently in some way connected with its growth. The best whalebone has several of these ridges. Interiorly, in front of the place where each lamina is inserted into the gum, are several rows of short stumps of whalebone terminated by a tuft, and before these again short white hair laminae graduating into a velvet-like substance in the mouth. It is said that the laminae, after once being produced, do not increase in number, but that the interspaces of the laminae increase in width. This interspace in adult Whales is from about half an inch to one inch in width. Occasionally two splits are found growing together in the gum, but separate below. The length of the whalebone depends, it is said, on the size of the head, and bears no ratio to the length of the body. Occasionally a long Whale has small and short whalebone, whilst a short dumpy individual (for there are individual differences in these as in all other animals, not referable to specific difference) may have much longer. The longest lamina of whalebone which I have heard of being obtained was 14 feet. I have personally known of another 13 feet 3 inches long; but the average length Is 12 feet and under. This is the middle split already spoken of, known to the whalers as the "size-split;" but in the measurement of this the tuft of " hair," which sometimes reaches six or seven inches in length, is not included-a very important matter, as much depends upon the |