ion of all
into one bone or cartilage seems to take place even in the youngest
foetus. In the foetus examined by me of this species (a specimen removed
from the uterus of a true _Mysticetus_ killed in the Greenland seas), I
do not recollect the precise appearance of the cervical vertebrae; but
the skeleton is in existence, and shall be referred to. To the skeleton
of the Rorqual now in the Museum at Antwerp, and which seems to me of
the same species as the one I dissected in Scotland (and of which the
skeleton, prepared with infinite care by my brother and myself, was
presented by me to the Town Council of Edinburgh, and is now preserved
in the Zoological Gardens of the same city), he gives the following
vertebrae:--

Skeleton of the Rorqual at Antwerp--Cervical 7
Dorsal 14-15
Lumbar 15
Caudal 25[C]
--------
Total 61 or 62

In the skeleton of the Great Rorqual now in the Zoological Gardens at
Edinburgh, and originally dissected and prepared by my brother and
myself, these vertebrae are--

Cervical 7
Dorsal 15
Lumbar and Caudal 43
--
Total 65

In that of the Lesser Rorqual I dissected in 1830, the skeleton of which
I think is still preserved in the Museum of the University of Edinburgh,
we found--

Vertebrae.
Cervical 7
Dorsal 11
Lumbar 13
Caudal 17
--
Total 48

The specimen was that of a young animal, and of the same species, I
believe, as the one described by Mr. Hunter and Fabricius; it is a
distinct species, and not merely the young of the Great Rorqual.

I shall return to the Dugong, as not being a Cetacean, in a future
Section: its skeleton has been examined in a masterly way by De
Blainville, an anatomist and observer of the highest order, since the
time I wrote and published my Memoir on the Dugong.

The first great step in the anatomy of the Cetacea is unquestionably due
to Cuvier; but his dissections were almost confined to the genus
_Delphinus_, or the common Porpoise of our coasts. I repeated all his
dissections, and found them, as they almost always were, scrupulously
exact; but when I came to examine Cetacea with whalebone instead of
teeth, I