Abstract
THE eleventh volume of the “Memoirs of the Boston Society of Natural History” contains a descriptive account, by Dr. Thomas Dwight, of the external characters and skeleton of a young razor-back whale, the skeleton of which is preserved in the Society's Museum. This animal was captured alive in October 1870, off Gloucester, Massachusetts, and its skeleton is the best preserved specimen of a large whale in any of the American museums. The animal was 48 ft. long, the flipper was 5 ft. 4 in., and the height of the dorsal fin, measured along the anterior edge, was 1 ft. 2 in. The baleen was of a very light straw colour anteriorly, whilst further back dark stripes appeared on it, until the hindmost blades were of a uniform dark slate colour. From the very careful description which Dr. Dwight has written of the skeleton, and from the figures given in illustration, there can be no question that the animal is a young example of the fin-whale, which Dr. Gray has named Physalus antiquorum, but which is more appropriately named Balænoptera musculus. In some remarks on the classification of the specimen, he refers to the tendency to variation in the forms of the bones exhibited in the skeletons of cetacea, undoubtedly belonging to the same species, and he agrees with those cetologists who have shown the danger of accepting mere individual variations in the forms of the bones of particular specimens as affording data for establishing specific or generic differences.
Description of a Specimen of Balænoptera musculus, in the possession of the Boston Society of Natural History.
By Thomas Dwight (Boston Society of Natural History.)
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T., W. Description of a Specimen of Balænoptera musculus, in the possession of the Boston Society of Natural History . Nature 6, 279 (1872). https://doi.org/10.1038/006279a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/006279a0