I. Baleen thin, polished, with a thick enamel on each side and a fine elongate slender fringe (cf. [p. 42]).
1. BALÆNA.
Balæna, Gray, l. c. p. 79; Synops. Whales & Dolph. p. 1; Lilljeborg, N. Acta Upsal. vi. 1867.
First rib slender, narrow, and undivided at the vertebral end. Tympanic bones square; aperture nearly as long as the bone. There is at the end of the radius and at the end of the cubitus a large cartilaginous compartment which corresponds with the radial and cubital bone, and has not even a bony nucleus; between these two cartilages is an intermediate cartilage; below these are two or three carpals. Cervical vertebræ united by their bodies. Upper lateral process of atlas broad at the base, compressed, rather narrow, and rounded at the end; the lower lateral process elongate, subcylindrical, angulated at the lower side of the base (see Cat. Whales, p. 84, f. 4; Ostéogr. Cét. t. 4. f. 5-9). The lower process of the second and third elongate and produced; the upper process of the second, fifth, sixth, and seventh elongate, produced, and bent forward. Bladebone with a large, compressed, elongate acromion (Ostéogr. Cét. t. 4. f. 26). Carpus cartilaginous, with three small carpal bones (Ostéogr. Cét. t. 4. f. 27).
1. Balæna mysticetus.
B.M.
Balæna mysticetus, Gray, l. c. pp. 81, 370, figs. 1, 2, 4, 5; Synops. Whales & Dolph. p. 1, t. 1. f. 4 (baleen); R. Brown, P. Z. S. 1868, p. 534.
Inhab. North Sea.
Dr. Robert Brown gives an account and notes of the habits and migrations of this animal. He observes:—“Where the Whale goes to in winter is still unknown. It is said that it leaves Davis Strait about the month of November, and produces young in the St. Lawrence River, between Quebec and Camaroa, returning to Davis Strait in the spring. At all events, early in the year they are found on the coast of Labrador, where the English whalers occasionally attack them; but the ships arrive generally too late, and the weather at that season is too tempestuous to render the ‘south-west fishing’ very attractive.... It is said that early in September they enter Cumberland (Hogarth’s) Sound in great numbers, and remain until it is completely frozen up, which, according to the Eskimo account, is not until January.... They enter the Sound again in the spring, and remain until the heat of summer has melted off the land-floes in these comparatively southern latitudes. It thus appears that they winter and produce their young all along the broken water off the southern coasts of Hudson’s Strait, Davis Strait, and Labrador.”
He continues, “I am strongly of belief that the Whales of the Spitzbergen sea never, as a body, visit Davis Strait, but winter somewhere in the open water at the southern edge of the northern ice-fields. The Whales are being gradually driven further north.”