(Authors are responsible for nomenclature used.) 



The Scottish Naturalist 



No. 82.] 1918 [October. 



ON WHALES LANDED AT THE SCOTTISH 

 WHALING STATIONS, ESPECIALLY DURING 

 THE YEARS 1908-1914 Parts II. and III. The 



S TERM-WHALE AND THE BLUE-WIIALE. 

 By D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson. 



II. The Sperm-whale {Physeter macrocepJialus, L.). 



The Sperm-whale or Cachalot (and here we are using 

 once again the ancient language of the Basques) is one of 

 the most widely distributed animals in the world, and a map 

 of the old Sperm whaling grounds, such as is given in Mr 

 A. H. Clark's Report on the American W/iale Fisheries, is a 

 wonderful lesson in geographical distribution. In the course 

 of its extensive wanderings the species has been cast up on 

 European shores many times. One of the oldest records is 

 that of a specimen stranded in the Scheldt on 2nd July 

 1 577, afterwards figured by Ambroise Pare 1 ; and its oldest 

 authentic record on our own coasts (so far as I know) is Sir 

 Thomas Browne's, of one which came ashore on the Norfolk 

 coast in the early seventeenth century. 2 



Of early Scottish records, we have Sibbald's specimen, 



1 CEuvres completes, Paris, 1840, vol. iii., p. 799. 



- See Sir Thomas Browne's Notes on Certain FisJies and Marine 

 Animals found in Norfolk: "Of fishes sometimes the larger sort are 

 taken or come ashoare. A spermaceti whale of 62 foote long neere 

 Wells. Another of the same kind 20 years before at Hunstanton, and 

 not farre of 8 or none came ashoare and 2 had young ones after they 

 were forsaken by the water." This account is, unfortunately, a little 

 ambiguous. It is not quite clear that these latter were also Sperm- whales. 

 82 2 C 



