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Show 1869.] OF THE COMMON FIN-WHALE. 605 surements and drawings of various parts put together, as the animal when lying dead on the beach, flattened and distorted by its own weight, or inflated by the liberation of gases within its cavities, can give but little idea of its appearance when swimming in its native element. Hence there are considerable discrepancies between the most reliable of the figures we possess even of the most common species*. The exact length in a straight line, from the front of the lower jaw (which projected about 18 inches beyond the muzzle) to the middle of the tail, was 61 feet, or 6 feet less than the Pevensey Whale, and 1 foot more than a Whale of the same species and sex (male) taken in the Thames in 1859, and which, as shown by the condition of the bones, now in the Rosherville Gardens, was fully adult. From the end of the muzzle to the axilla was 19 feet 10 inches ; from the same part to the middle of the eye 12 feet, to the hinder border of the dorsal fin 45 feet 6 inches. The dorsal fin rose gradually in front, with a convex border, to a vertical height of 1 foot 3 inches, the apex was short and recurved, the posterior border hollowed; the base was rather more than 2 feet in length. The flukes of the tail (Plate XLVII. fig. 3) measured 11 feet across, and 2 feet 10 inches from before backwards near the middle line. As in the Pevensey Whale, the right was markedly convex, and the left concave, on the upper surface, giving the characteristic screw-like form to the main organ of propulsion. The terminal portion of the trunk, between the dorsal fin and the flukes of the tail, was, as usual in the species, strongly compressed, of great and nearly uniform vertical depth (4 feet), and sharply ridged above and below. The pectoral fins, measured from the axilla to the tip, were 5 feet 4 inches long, and 1 foot 7 inches in greatest breadth, which was about midway between those points. Towards the tip the upper or ulnar border was somewhat excavated. The tip was rather sharply pointed. The upper surface of the head was on the whole remarkably flat; but immediately in front of the blow-holes a strong median ridge rose rather abruptly, then gradually subsided to about midway be- * The most authentic representations of the external characters of the Whale under consideration with which I a m acquainted are:- 1. From a specimen, 45 feet long, stranded in 1825 on the west coast of Eiigen. Figured in 'Einige Naturhistor. JBemerk. iiber die Walle,' by F. Eosenthal. Griefswald, 1827. (Called Baleena rostrata, var. major.) 2. From an animal, 51 feet long, stranded on the coast of Holland. Schlegel, Abhand. a. d. Gtebiete der Zoologie, Heft i. pl. 6, 1841. (Called Baleena sulcata avcticci.} 3. From an animal, 40 feet long, stranded near Katwijk, in Holland, in 1841. Ibid. Heft ii. pl. 9, 1843. (Called Balcenoptera arctica.) 4. From an animal, 50 feet long, stranded in the Orkney Isles, 1856. E. Heddle, Proc. Zool. Soc. 1856, pis. XLIV. and XLV. (Called Physalus duguidii.) 5. From an animal, 40£ feet long, stranded on the Lofoden Islands. (Called Balcenoptera musculus.) G. O. Sars, Vid-Selskab. Forhand. Christiania, 1865. The various names assigned to these specimens by their respective describers illustrate the difficulties of the nomenclature of this group. |
