The specimen which formed the subject of this memoir was one of three, imported into England by Mr Farini of London.

The skeleton being already well known, and the state of the parts preventing an examination of the muscular anatomy, attention was directed solely to that of the viscera, of which no complete description had hitherto been given. Drs Barclay and Neill in this country, and subsequently Professor Wyman in America, had previously investigated some points in the anatomy of the soft parts of Beluga, but their descriptions are so fragmentary as to necessitate a more accurate and extended investigation of the viscera.