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Show 1867.] DR. H. BURMEISTER ON A NEW FINNER WHALE. 707 Scales cycloid ; two rows between eye and angle of praeoperculum ; those on the summit of the head with their posterior border festooned. Colours. Of a dull green on the back and sides, and*dirty white along the abdomen. Numerous small and brilliant blue spots along the sides, alternating with rusty-red ones when the fish is alive and in good health, but they fade after death. A light spot on the summit of the head, which is sometimes absent. Dorsal fin white, with a large black spot along its base. Anal orange. Eye silvery. 5. Preliminary Description of a New Species of Finner Whale (Balcenoptera bonaerensis). By Dr. H. B U R M E I S T E R, F.M.Z.S., Director of the Public Museum, Buenos Ayres. The animal which I now bring before the notice of the scientific public was found dead, floating on the river Plata, near Belgrano, about ten miles from Buenos Ayres, by a fisherman, who brought the body on shore on the 5th of February of this year, and informed me on the next day of his discovery. I was then confined by illness to my room, and was unable to go to see the body until fourteen days later. Putrefaction had already destroyed the Whale's external appearance ; but as I found the body lying on the ground near the shore I was able to take a sufficiently accurate measure of it by steps. It was then 16 paces long, of which nearly 4 belonged to the head, and 12 to the trunk with the tail. Calculating m y steps in moderate walking as equal to 2 feet, I made the whole body 32 feet long; and now measuring the skull alone I find it is 7 feet long, leaving 25 feet for the trunk and tail. This 25 feet is divided in the skeleton in such a manner that 1 foot is occupied by the seven vertebrae of the neck, 3\ feet by the eleven dorsal vertebrae, 8\ feet by the twelve lumbar, and 10 feet by the nineteen of the tail, the 4 additional feet being for the external parts of the animal-the skin, the cellular covering under it, and the intervertebral cartilages. As the surface was already destroyed by putrefaction, I could not see distinctly the eyes, the ear-openings, or the nostrils. I only observed that the under jaw was about 4 inches longer than the tip of the skull and surrounded the upper jaw in its whole circumference. Ten paces from the tip of the nose was a triangular falcate dorsal fin about 1 foot high and 1| foot long; and on the tip of the tail a large caudal fin with the usual two lobes, about 6\ feet distant from each other at the hinder ends, and each 5^ feet long, and 1\ foot broad at the beginning. The pectoral fins I could not examine very exactly-the one being already destroyed, and the other covered by the body ; but they appeared to have the usual triangular form, and a length of from 3| to 4 feet. The rest of the skin was of a dark black-grey colour, like the old clay-slate, but lighter and nearly white-grey on the under- |
