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Show 1867.J DR. H. BURMEISTER ON A NEW FINNER WHALE. 711 life of the animal j the same circumstance may have also united the first and second dorsal vertebrae, which are also anchylosed to each other at some points of the arch and the upper part of the body. As the animal is a very old one, having no epiphyses separated in the whole skeleton, I must believe that it was wounded when young on the left side of the neck, perhaps by the harpoon of a whaler. The eleven dorsal vertebra? have the usual form, and increase in size from before backwards rapidly, the bodv of the first vertebra being only If inch, and the eleventh 5 | inches ; they have all long lateral processes, to an excavation on the hinder edge of which are attached the ribs. The spinous processes increase gradually in height to the middle of the lumbar portion of the vertebral column. There are eleven pairs of ribs. The first is broader than the others and 2 feet long. The longest is 4 feet in a straight line, and in the middle of the series. The first pair is attached to the sternum, which has a very peculiar form. It is (fig. 3) like a cross, resembling the Fig. 3. Sternum of B. bonaerensis. same bone of the European species; but the upper, short branch of the cross is, unlike that of B. rostrata, divided into two large parallel lobes. No bone proves more convincingly the distinctness of the |
