254 THE SCOTTISH NATURALIST 



Sperm Whale in the Moray Pirth. We have received from 

 a correspondent copies of Caithness newspapers recording the 

 landing of a Sperm Whale on the Caithness coast near Latheron, in 

 the latter half of May. The whale was towed ashore by an 

 Admiralty patrol boat, which found it floating in the Moray Firth. 

 It may have been killed by striking a submarine mine, but in what 

 locality is uncertain, as it had evidently been dead for some time, 

 and may have drifted a considerable distance. The Whale was 

 found to be 59 ft. 4 ins. long. Sperm Whales, almost invariably 

 aged bulls, are occasionally met with off the western coast, and 

 every year formed a small proportion of the catch of the whaling 

 stations on Harris and the Shetlands. 



Rediscovery of a Scottish species of Phoronis. As long 

 ago as 1856 Dr Strethill Wright described a new genus of Polyzoon- 

 like animals, Phoronis, including a species, P. ova/is, which was 

 found upon an oyster-shell dredged near Inchkeith in the Firth of 

 Forth. Since that time this species has never again been recorded, 

 and doubt has been thrown on its distinctness. Now, however, 

 Dr S. F. Harmer has rediscovered P. ovalis on a shell from the 

 Northumberland coast, and the difficulty of perceiving the 

 gregarious colony of minute polyps, which was entirely buried in the 

 substance of the shell, leads him to surmise that the species is probably 

 more common than has been imagined, and that careful search may 

 reveal its presence along a great part of our eastern coast. 

 Dr Harmer gives some interesting information about the habit and 

 structure of this rare Phoronis, and particularly describes and 

 illustrates the mode by which the colonies are formed by the 

 division of individual polyps. 1 



Limax cinereo-niger in Aberdeenshire South. I am 



indebted to Miss J. Gowan for a large number of Limax cinereo-niger 

 var. maura and one v. luctuosa, from the pine-woods of the Fangle 

 Glen close to Aboyne, taken 28th June 191 7 at about 500 feet 

 altitude. They were in company with abundance of fine Arion ater 

 type and var. aterrima. This is our first authentication of the Limax 

 for Aberdeen South. W. Denison Roebuck, 259 Hyde Park Road, 

 Leeds. 



1 Quart. Journ. Micr. Sci., vol. lxii., 1917, pp. n 5-148. 



