The Scottish Naturalist 147 



I could count only twelve pairs of ribs, the matter is still 

 open. It had a number of tubercles or short spines on the 

 upper anterior edge of the dorsal fin. In a paper read 

 at a meeting of the Zoological Society "in 1865, Dr. Gray 

 directed attention to these curious tubercles as observed 

 by him on the dorsal fin of a porpoise caught at Margate. 

 Previous to this these tubercles had not been noticed in any of 

 the descriptions of the common porpoise published in this 

 country. Dr. Gray considering the difference anatomically 

 that would appear— from the descriptions of anatomists — to 

 exist amongst the members of this species concluded that he 

 had met with a new animal, which he named P. tuber culif era. 

 As subsequently pointed out by himself, however, the spines 

 on the fin had been noticed by Pliny, Camper, and Dr. Jackson 

 on an American specimen. In the additions and corrections 

 at the end of his catalogue of seals and whales, published in 

 1866, he states that several porpoises caught on the coast cf 

 England have been lately examined, and they all have spines 

 or tubercles on the upper edge of the dorsal fin, and that 

 specimens without these tubercles are desiderata. Meantime 

 he retains tuberculifera as a var. 



Since the publication of Dr. Gray's paper I have examined 

 some eight or nine porpoises, newly caught or stranded on 

 the coast of Scotland, and they all had tubercles on the 

 dorsal fin. On some individuals they were not very apparent, 

 more especially when the animal was fresh. Sex does not 

 appear to me, so far as I have seen, to make any difference 

 in this respect. In the autumn of 1869, I examined a newly 

 killed half grown male at Crail. At the time I could not 

 distinguish any tubercles, and was under the impression that 

 I had found the missing animal. I cut off the dorsal fin and 

 put it in spirit On examining it about three weeks after, 

 when it had shrunk somewhat, the tubercles although small 

 were quite visible. It would thus appear that in the present 

 condition of the matter the tubercles cannot be relied on to 

 indicate more than possibly a variety of the porpoise. 



The skull does not differ materially from that of other 

 porpoises with which I have compared it. It is rather less in 

 proportion to the size of the animal, the beak is somewhat 

 narrower, the foramen magnum is larger, and the vomer is 



