. Catalogue of seals and whales in the British Museum. British Museum (Natural History); Seals (Animals); Whales. 3. HtlNTERIFS. 99 small portion of the belly. The skull is proportionally smaller than in the Greenland Right Whale, much higher and broader behind. The muzzle viewed from above bulges at the sides. The frontal bone and the hindmost excrescence of the upper jaw are not oblique from behind, but (at least in matui'ity) laterally flattened; finally, the lower jaw is much more powerful. " Our skeleton has seven vertebra3 in the neck, of which the first four are soldered together,
. Catalogue of seals and whales in the British Museum. British Museum (Natural History); Seals (Animals); Whales. 3. HtlNTERIFS. 99 small portion of the belly. The skull is proportionally smaller than in the Greenland Right Whale, much higher and broader behind. The muzzle viewed from above bulges at the sides. The frontal bone and the hindmost excrescence of the upper jaw are not oblique from behind, but (at least in matui'ity) laterally flattened; finally, the lower jaw is much more powerful. " Our skeleton has seven vertebra3 in the neck, of which the first four are soldered together, and only the second and third have lateral processes beneath. There are 15 pairs of ribs, of which only those nearest the middle, viz. the third to the seventh, are provided with a small crown; they do not, however, reach the vertebrae of the body. " The fii'st rib is unusually broadly and deeply inserted into the end of the sternum, or running straight out into two processes, and divided at the vertebral ends by a deep notch into two knobs, it is fastened to the lateral processes of the first and second vertebrae. There are onlj^ 10 dorsal vertebrae, 8 lumbar, and 24 caudal. The flipper has five well-articulated digital and clearly developed meta- carpal ;—Schlegel. Ahhandl. 1841, 37- Fio-. First rib of Himterius Temminckii, in the Leyden Museum. (From a sketch by Mr. Gerrard.) Mr. Flower has given me a drawing of the ear-bone from the same specimen: it is rhombic, very thick and swollen, like, but rather wider than, the ear-bone of Euhalmia australis. " A very fine skull of an adult and a nearly complete skeleton of a young incUvidual, both obtained from the Cape of Good Hope by Dr. Horstock, are contained in the Leyden Museum. These are briefly described by Schlegel in his ' Abhandlungen aus dem Gebiete der Zoologie,' &c. (Leyden, 1841), part 1. p. 37. "The skull is 13' 5" in extreme length. To any one accustomed to the appearance of
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Keywords: ., bookauthorgrayjohn, bookcentury1800, bookdecade1860, bookyear1866
