of Europe in modern times are in the harbour of San Sebastian in January 1854, in the Gulf of Taranto, in the Mediterranean, in February 1877, and on the Spanish coast between Guetaria and Zarauz (Guipuzcoa) in February 1878. The skeletons of these three whales are preserved in the museums of Copenhagen, Naples, and San Sebastian respectively. On the coast of the United States several Whales of this species have been taken within the last few years. In the North Pacific a very similar if not identical species is regularly hunted by the Japanese, who tow the carcases ashore for the purposes of flensing and extracting the whalebone. In the tropical seas, however, according to Captain Maury’s whale charts, Right Whales are never or rarely seen; but the southern temperate ocean, especially the neighbourhood of the Cape of Good Hope, Kerguelen’s Island, Australia, and New Zealand, is inhabited by “Black Whales,” once abundant, but now nearly exterminated through the wanton destruction of the females as they visit the bays and inlets round the coast, their constant habit in the breeding time. The range of these Whales southward has not been accurately determined; but no species corresponding with the Arctic Right Whale has as yet been met with in the Antarctic icy seas. [Illustration: FIG. 78.—The right tympanic bone of an immature individual of the Greenland Whale (_Balæna mysticetus_), from the inner (_A_) and outer (_B_) aspects. ¹⁄₃ natural size. (From the _Proc. Zool. Soc._)] Remains of Right Whales are of not uncommon occurrence in the Pliocene Crag deposits of England and Belgium. The tympanics of _B. affinis_ from these deposits appear to indicate a species closely allied to _B. mysticetus_, in which this bone is long and angulated anteriorly (Fig. 78); while the tympanics from the same deposits described as _B. primigenia_ are shorter and more rounded at the antero-inferior angle, thus resembling those of _B. australis_. A smaller species, having an estimated length of about 20 feet, has been described as _Balænula balænopsis_, the generic distinction being made on account of the free condition of the atlas and seventh cervical vertebræ; but it seems scarcely advisable to regard such a feature as indicating more than a less specialised species. _Balæna (Balænotus) insignis_ is a whale of somewhat larger dimensions, in which the atlas is generally, and the seventh cervical vertebra always, free, while in young individuals the axis vertebra may likewise be separate.